10000BC

Directed by: Roland Emmerich

Starring: Steven Strait, Camilla Belle, Cliff Curtis

Synopsis:

D'Leh, a young hunter, must fulfil a prophecy in order to rescue his tribe, and especially his lover, who have been abducted by slave traders to help build a great pyramid in the desert...

Review:

With Roland Emmerich, you expect a certain type of movie, just as you would with Michael Bay, or anything produced by Jerry Bruckheimer: big trashy action, lots of thrills, not a lot of brain food.

Now, that seems to be what Emmerich was going for here, but somewhere along the line, someone got cold feet. The story itself is dumb but mostly fun - similar to both Apocalypto and Pathfinder. The set pieces are pretty good - the mammoth hunt for example, and the giant ostriches. The acting is pretty consistent throughout - New Zealander Cliff Curtis certainly is memorable as the more experienced hunter, TicTic.

Based on the above, this movie would be scoring about 6 or 7 out of 10 here. I can forgive the bizarre geography, I can buy the idea of mammoths being used in "Egypt" (pyramids, desert, you know - Egypt). I can even stomach the Stargate-trappings of the finale. These are all things that I kind of expect from this sort of movie (It reminds me of a Simpsons episode where they go to see "zorro", where he fights the scarlet pimpernel and ends up king of England, and Bart goes, "its like a history lesson brought to life!).

There are two elements which truly sunk this movie.

The first is the way the film keeps cutting back to the Soothsayer from D'lehs tribe. This kind of makes sense right at the end of the movie, but for the most part, anytime anything interesting happens, we cut straight back to her. It's almost as if she's giving a blow-by-blow account to her people. It's annoying because it makes the movie seem more episodic than it actually is.

But even worse than that was THE SODDING NARRATION!!!

The movie opens with the narrator spouting nonsense, and he does not shut up for the entire movie. What's worse, he narrates the most obvious stuff, the things that have been visually laid out on a plate. For example: the desert tribes all come together to help D'leh, which we can see - there they all are on the screen, all different tribes, hundreds of people... then seconds later the narrator explains exactly what we can see for ourselves. I wanted to scream "WE KNOW! WE CAN SEE FOR OURSELVES! SHUT UP!" It made me wonder if Emmerich originally planned to have no English dialogue - that would have made the narration more valid. But having both just does not make any sense.

Verdict:

If not for the horrible narration, this could have been decent escapist fun. instead it's ponderous, patronising and silly. I can only hope that a narration-less version is released at some point.

3 out of 10 with narration

6 out of 10 without narration.

Review by MikeOutWest