10,000 B.C.

Set in, you know, 10,000 B.C., Steven Strait stars as D’Leh – an outcaste member of a hunting tribe in the mountains. When he was young, D’Leh did not have a strong relationship with the other boys in camp, but formed a loving bond with a young girl, Evolet (Camilla Belle), rescued from another tribe, who might be part of an important prophecy. When D’Leh reaches his coming of age and has a chance to win Evolet’s hand (and everything else), it looks like the two love birds have a chance at true happiness, but a tribe of warriors raids the village and takes her as a slave. Now, D’Leh must find the courage to travel across desert, snow, tall grass and more to get her back.

Will D’Leh be able to find her in time?

Can he do battle with the vicious warriors who hold her?

10,000 B.C. is a disaster that can’t even get the computer generated images right. Writer/director Roland Emmerich and co-writer Harald Kloser prove they have seen 300, The Ten Commandments, Jurrasic Park, Apocalypto and a handful of other movies like 10,000 B.C., by inserting all sorts of similar and clichéd elements, but they didn’t copy the best parts. Instead we get all sorts of horrendous dialogue and story about prophecies, The Hunter, The Mark, and mystical Shamans who see the future and present, but none of it feels original or interesting. Plus, Emmerich goes for the simplistic arrangement of the bad guys speaking in some sort of foreign tongue, while the good guys all speak English. Couldn’t he just start the movie in a foreign language like The Hunt For Red October, then transition into English?

Then, the audience, if they think about it for 10 seconds, are left to wonder where all of this is supposed to be happening. Are the bad guys Vikings? Are they all marching to Egypt? Is the hunting tribe located in the European mountains? When did they cross the ocean? Did I miss that scene? How come the evil tribe seems to be multi-cultural?

Plus, those CGI animals are pitiful. The Wooly Mammoths move in klunky ways instead of smoothly and more realistically walking across the screen. The Saber Tooth Tiger that stars in the trailer and commercials (and barely appears in the movie) looks like a cartoon drawing inserted into the film at the last minute. And, we are treated to a weird collection of pre-historic, hungry, vicious ostriches, which are more comic relief than scary.

Of course, after butchering the rest of 10,000 B.C., Emmerich can’t let go and allows the movie to go on and on and on long after the movie should have ended, and throws in a twist only writers from professional wrestling could appreciate. I got so bored with the movie, I started to notice that all of the primal warriors with scraggly hair did find time to manicure their eyebrows, which is historically inaccurate as well as being a bad sign that you just couldn’t care less how it ends.

10,000 B.C. is rated PG-13 for sequences of intense action and violence.