10,000 B.C. (2008)

O Masterpiece
O Excellent
O Rental
X OK
O Mediocrity
O Avoid

Review by Jason Pyles / March 7, 2008

Watching “10,000 B.C.” is akin to watching your 3rd grader stunt-doubling for a tree in the school play: You perk up for a couple brief, fleeting moments when your kid’s on stage; and when your little, felled coniferous “exeunts,” you return to sawing logs.

Just in case you think I’m exaggerating, I kept writing the word “boring” in my notes throughout my screening of “10,000 B.C.” And precisely when I wondered if I was being unfair, I heard the guy beside me start snoring. To be clear, as you observe my rating scale above, I’ve rated this movie as merely “OK,” which is found beneath “Rental.” … Beneath rental.

Director of epics but rarely an epic director, Roland Emmerich, the same filmmaker who gave us “Independence Day” (1996), “Godzilla” (1998), and “The Patriot” (2000), whisks us back in time to a prehistoric land. Unfortunately, we’ve seen this same movie and its identical story (done much better) just two years ago. It was called “Apocalypto” (2006). The plots are so parallel, Emmerich’s movie borders on copyright infringement.

Both films are essentially long chase scenes. Both films begin with their tribes’ young men on a hunt. Both films’ tribes are attacked by another ferocious tribe. Both films have forlorn, bewildered heroes trailing behind their kidnapped tribe members. Both films have a surprisingly helpful big cat. Both films have a huge, abominable city, complete with pyramids and human sacrifices. Both films have supernatural events surrounding their heroes. Both films are not, however, equal: “10,000 B.C.” could rightly be called “the poor man’s ‘Apocalypto,’” or “the caveman’s ‘Apocalypto,’” which is to say, “so easy even a caveman could do it.”

The best part of “10,000 B.C.” is what will draw most people to the theater: the woolly mammoths. Some people might call them mastodons, but there is a difference. I don’t know what that difference is, but it really doesn’t matter since both kinds are dead. During one peculiar moment, we see a close-up shot of a mammoth stomping past the screen and the camera shakes. This struck me as strange because the audience perspective in this film is typically third-person omniscient-observer (occasionally subjective point-of-view); but for that moment, the filmmakers’ rule for this movie is broken and the camera crew is apparently there documenting the stampeding elephants.

“10,000 B.C.” has some intended humor, but most of its funniest moments are unintended. For instance, it’s odd that the other tribes speak some strange tongue that is either conveniently translated by some remarkably bright, bilingual, prehistoric person; or we are given subtitles. But our tribe, yes, the one we’re supposed to identify with, speaks English. Puzzling. What year is it, again? Anyway, Emmerich obviously knows that we’d rather have modern English dialogue, such as, “We must ‘bring them down,’” rather than have an air of authenticity with another language, like we had in, say, “Apocalypto.”

There are other humorous elements. Many scenes are cross-cut back to “Old Mother” (Mona Hammond), the protagonist tribe’s mysterious sage who experiences the travelers’ unpleasant encounters vicariously. But these scenes play more like some “Abbot & Costello Meet the Voodoo People” episode. Also, at one point the lead character, D’Leh (Steven Strait), chats with a blind man who has an unusual manner of speaking, which sounds like a drunken Mike-Tyson impersonator.

“10,000 B.C.” gives proper attention to two small details: Its weary travelers become hungry (as weary travelers often do), and its fair lady, Evolet (Camilla Belle), has thick eyebrows, unlike the carefully tweezed eyebrows worn by modern-day gals. But despite such careful considerations, “10,000 B.C.” looks artificial like the over-polished CGI epic that it is. Because of the apparent hard work that went into making this film, I couldn’t rate it as “Mediocrity,” because it isn’t.

The primary offense, however, that will make the soon-to-be extinct “10,000 B.C.” ancient history at the box office is its pacing. The movie frequently slows down to a grinding halt, magnifying its focus for intimate character development. The problem is, the characters are flat and familiar, the developments don’t really matter, and we don’t really care. Did I mention this movie is boring?

If you’re left with nothing else to do, and you’re tempted to rent “10,000 B.C.,” I might recommend doing a quick check for 3rd grade stage productions first.

Directed by Roland Emmerich
Steven Strait / Camilla Belle / Cliff Curtis
Action / Adventure 109 min.
MPAA: PG-13 (for sequences of intense action and violence)

U.S. Release Date: March 7, 2008
Copyright 2008: 254