[Movie Review] 10,000 BC
You know me right? I’m not adverse to calling shit ‘good shit’ if that is what it is. I’m the guy that gave Semi-Pro three ‘popcorns’ for being likeable despite pretty much failing as a comedy. I handed the same rating over to giant killer crocodile come Hotel Rwanda-style genocide B-movie, Primeval Kill. Hell, as a huge fan of Roland Emmerich’s Independence Day I occasionally try to defend or at least find some fleeting joy in his failure of a Godzilla movie. So you know, right, that if Emmerich’s latest, 10,000 BC, was a) the great opening shot from the cannon of the most anticipated blockbuster seasons in many, many years or b) shit of the variety whereby it was so shit that it was actually good, then I’d be shouting it loud and shouting it proud.
But it’s neither of those things. It’s the sort of tepid failure made with such aplomb that you can’t quite bring yourself to rate it a one ‘popcorn’ atrocity but at the same time you secretly acknowledge that’s exactly what it is.
The film is some silly baloney involving mammoth hunting cavemen, and one in particular (Steven Strait) whose blue-eyed virginal sweetheart (Camille Belle) is kidnapped by hook-nosed evil ‘types’ and taken away to be sacrificed to the ‘visiting gods’ who are midway through enforcing the building of the pyramids by slaves. Standout caveman type gives chase through beautiful scenery to get her back and free the… Look I tried! Forget the plot. It’s Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto for men who give oral sex to their mother and who push on doors when the big sign says pull.
The simple fact of the matter is that asides from fleeting (and I’m talking mere seconds) of visual interest in the dying third of the film, 10,000 BC fails on every single conceivable level: The script is horrendously bad, consisting of irritatingly clunky dialogue and an “epic” journey that has been seen a thousand times before in a thousand better movies. The acting is, across the board, atrocious with the film screaming out for a charismatic and interesting couple of leads and settling for the horrific Steven Strait (who recently made me throw up in my own mouth when I caught him being interviewed on MTV, telling his female interviewer with a suggestive wink “I’m Strait… and I’m single!” I wish I was making this up for comedic purposes!) and the normally interesting Camille Belle who phones in her performance so obviously that at one point she is having her hand whipped and her close-up reaction looks as if her hook-nosed oppressor is writing his digits on her palm! Even a couple of prominent character actors placed in as villains or something would have been good enough to offset some of the damage but no, we have to settle for Cliff Curtis on the side of the “good” and an army of burly men who answered the casting call for “males with large noses” on the “bad”.
Then there’s the special effects. Judged on their own, the effects are awesome. I truly mean that. When you’ve got a singular shot of a giant mammoth or of the pyramids being built with millions of workers churning away, it looks staggering. However, the minute such effects are put into the same shot as a living, breathing (although this criteria should be checked in the case of Mr Strait!) actor then we’re forced to endure some of the most half-arsed incompetent special effects seen on screen since Peter Jackson delivered the dinosaur stampede in his excessive King Kong remake! And, at the end of the day, the job of such effects is to work in tandem with the live action and not to exist as standalone CGI animated sequences, and the unarguable fact is they just don’t do their job! Giant birds, saber-tooth tigers etc. etc. are the bread and butter for the paying audience to survive on. Let me tell you that the audience are going to go hungry. Even away from those all important “money shots” though, the film is nothing if not a total stand-out in terms of utter mediocrity when it comes to the effects. Shots of characters standing in front of beautiful backgrounds scream ‘Green Screen’ and sword and stick battles are obviously non-clashes sped up for effect with stunt people reacting and hitting the dirt to impacts that didn’t actually, you know, impact upon them.
All in all though, you couldn’t have asked for a more perfect audience member for a film of this type then me. I love a good big, dumb action extravaganza to sit alongside my experiences of things like Sean Penn’s majestic Into The Wild or Ben Affleck’s ready-made masterpiece Gone Baby Gone. This film most definitely is not it.
It gets one ‘popcorn’ for Emmerich at least trying, despite repeatedly failing, to set up an interesting action set piece in terms of those aforementioned fleeting (and I’m talking mere seconds) of visual interest in the dying third of the film. It gets another for casting ‘Blossom’ from UK TV’s Eastenders as the head maternal figure of the cavemen (Wah Da Fuh?!?) and then it loses a ‘popcorn’ due to this moment of clarity I’m experiencing whereby I cannot help but shrug off all that “can’t quite bring myself” nonsense and think “This film is shit and deserves to be labeled exactly that!”
1/2
Related Posts:
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- [Retro Review] KING KONG (2005)
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- [Movie Review] TAKEN
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4 Responses to “[Movie Review] 10,000 BC”
From the sounds of it I may as well save my hard earned and just wait for it to be released to TV…
Did this film ever have any potential?
My friend saw this, callled me afterwards, and said that he’d just seen the worst movie of all time. From that and this review, I’m gonna pass.
10000BC - worst movie I watched in 2008AD
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