Silly 'B.C.' offers 10,000 reasons to avoid this film
The sheer lunacy of "10,000 B.C." -- the audacious scope of its spectacular awfulness -- gives it a peculiar fascination akin to witnessing a cinematic head-on collision of charging locomotives.
Whether it's the jaw-dropping spectacle of woolly mammoths stampeding atop pyramids under construction, or a dismally animated saber-toothed tiger befriending the hero, "10,000 B.C." runs the gamut from bland badness to cheesy hilarity.
We already know when the story takes place. It centers on a young lad named D'Leh whose father has deserted his tribe, leaving him a coward's son. D'Leh grows up to be Steven Strait, a New York actor who, even in Rastafarian locks and animal pelts, still looks like he's in a commercial promoting razors.
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He has the hots for Evolet (Camilla Belle), whose iridescent blue eyes instantly tell us she's probably from another tribe, perhaps the Mabelines. The leads are Caucasians. Yet, their fellow "tribe" members look like a group of United Nations ambassadors.
Tic Tic is played by Maori actor Cliff Curtis. Old Mother is played by Jamaican actress Mona Hammond. D'Leh's friend Nakudu is played by Caribbean actor Joel Virgel.
None of these tribe members speaks with the same accent. Judging by their uniformly perfect teeth, the tribe at least subscribes to an excellent dental plan.
As Old Mother prophesies, the "four-legged demons" (wicked-looking slave traders on horseback) arrive one day and abduct most of the tribe members, including Evolet.
D'Leh, Tic Tic and two others go off to save their friends and Evolet, launching "10,000 B.C." on a very familiar cinematic journey pasted together from pieces of films as varied as "Quest for Fire," "Apocalypto," "Helen of Troy," "300" and a golden oldie titled "Kings of the Sun."
Omar Sharif narrates "10,000 B.C." with brain-damaging observations of obviousness. When snow covers up the marauders' tracks, Sharif offers, "The white rain was no friend to the warriors." Really?
The heroic quartet encounters all kinds of climate zones and dangers, including "Lost World"-like creatures with fatal beaks. Let's not forget that saber-toothed tiger D'Leh saves from drowning. Instead of chewing on D'Leh, the creature pays homage to "Androcles and the Lion" by being loyal to the warrior. Obviously, the screenwriters have never had cats as pets.
Just when you can't imagine how "10,000 B.C." could get any loopier, it turns into a prehistoric "Braveheart" with D'Leh uniting the tribes of the known world, each one wanting revenge against the busy evil marauders for enslaving their fellow tribesmen and forcing them to construct a pyramid for a fearsome, never-glimpsed leader eerily called "The Almighty."
"10,000 B.C." comes from director Roland Emmerich, who has made his fortune with special-effects-stuffed action epics such as "StarGate," "Godzilla," "Independence Day" and "The Day After Tomorrow."
Here, Emmerich pulls off several visually sweeping CGI sequences but fumbles whenever he's forced to deal with characters in the flesh.
Strait and Belle look as if they're acting in a pilot for an "O.C." spinoff instead of playing a prehistoric couple slightly more realistic than Ringo Starr and Barbara Bach in "Caveman."
The ambitious scale of "10,000 B.C." may be mammoth, but the rest of it? Woolly-headed nonsense.
"10,000 B.C."
1#189; stars
THE DETAILS
Starring: Steven Strait, Camilla Belle, Cliff Curtis, Joe Virgel and Affif Ben Badra.
Directed by: Roland Emmerich
Other: A Warner Bros. release. Rated PG-13 (violence). 108 minutes.