Review: Land of the Lost
Casting adult comedy stars Will Ferrell (Anchorman, Step Brothers, you’ve heard of him right?) and Danny McBride (Eastbound and Down, All the Real Girls, Tropic Thunder) in a “children’s film” was asking for trouble! And, I have no doubt that this was intended to be a “children’s film”. Special effects? Check! Simple plot? Check! Big dinosaurs? Check! Marketing campaign targeted at kids? Check! It is no surprise it failed!
In your bog standard “children’s film” the adults are usually thrown a modicum of innocent adult humour to keep them happy while the ankle-biters take in their empty-calorie treat. In Land of the Lost, all of the humour is adult; some of it surreal and some of it fairly crude. In both cases, I have a hard time believing that kids would get the jokes, let alone find them funny. This movie, a bunch of kids and their “soccer” moms in the same room spells disaster!
When the film was released earlier this year I was strangely looking forward to it. A big-budget, surreal, kid’s flick with Danny McBride and Will Ferrell? Sounds like heaven! Then the reviews came in. They were not favourable. But, catching-up with this on DVD, it actually is a little bit like heaven!
Based on a seventies TV show, the story is simple. Scientist Dr. Rick Marshall portends that the world’s energy crisis can be solved with a solution involving other dimensions. Made a laughing stock on national TV he is highjacked into proving his theory by an attractive female scientist (attractive, Hollywood, go figure!) played by Anna Friel. Dragged along for the ride is mulleted hick Will Stanton (McBride).
As I mentioned earlier, the plot is simple and fairly typical. However, it is never taken too seriously and is consciously just there to string one surreal sequence to another.
The humour is off-the-wall and builds as the film progresses. If you are in a silly mood everything, from a cheeky breast/crotch grabbing simian and a tenacious T-Rex (with a brain the size of a walnut!), hits. A couple of sequences at the end had me hollering in laughter they were so inspired (and ridiculous); I will not give them away but one involves a giant crab and the other the aforementioned T-Rex.
I do not want to make it sound like this is the second coming of cinema. It won’t change your life. But if the mood strikes you, this is a hell of a lot of fun! Just don’t show the kids!
