MOVIE REVIEW:" LAND OF THE LOST"

BY: LEE RICE

Although it has a few funny moments, the laughs are few and far between in ‘Land of the Lost,’ the new, comedic adaptation of a popular 1970’s television series.

The basic premise remains the same, people fall through a time portal, get stuck in a pocket dimension filled with people and objects from the past, present and future, and adventure ensues.

Although the original series was played more or less straight faced, the dated effects and cheesy camp that it offers are ripe for lampooning, and ‘Land’ manages to succeed more or less in doing so. If it had stuck to lampooning the original, it may have been quite a bit funnier. Unfortunately, it quickly falls victim to the ‘Will Ferrell’ curse, quickly descending into jokes about horny ape men, masturbation gags, and fecal humor.

As with most of his other comedies, Will Ferrell plays an oversized man child that reminds me of that one immature uncle everyone seems to have. You know, the one who would always offer to drink month old milk for a dollar in a desperate attempt to be the center of attention? Here he covers himself in hadrosaur urine, drinks some, is excreted by a dinosaur, has his genitals fondled by a monkey man, and generally lowers the films brow to the point where it is scraping the floor. The one sequence that I found genuinely funny was when he is singing the original ‘Land of the Lost’ theme while unknowingly being exsanguinated by a giant mosquito.

To be honest, there are precious few Will Ferrell movies that I like, and I wish his agent would get him more work like the excellent ‘Stranger than Fiction,’ a much funnier movie that proves Ferrell capable of doing better than this poorly written crap.

The film also suffers from severe pacing issues in the second half, mostly due to an interminable sequence where the three male characters are stoned out of their gourds. Because that’s funny. The movie told me so.

If there is one thing that can be said about this movie, it’s that a lot of imagination went into the production design. Everything has a cool, surrealist feel to it, mostly caused by the juxtaposition of various articles from different times appearing in prehistoric landscapes. Whoever managed to put this together did a great job of making it look and feel like the original show, or rather what the original show would have been like if they’d had a couple extra million to spend.

In all, ‘Land of the Lost’ will deliver about what it’s audience expected; a bawdy Will Ferrell ‘comedy’ with a sense of humor about as sophisticated as that of an 8 year old.

Final Verdict: C-