Starring: Steven Strait, Camilla Belle, Cliff Curtis, Affif Ben Badra, Mo Zinal, Joel Virgel, Nathanael Baring

Directed by: Roland Emmerich

Warner Brothers

The Official Site of 10,000 B.C.

Discuss 10,000 B.C. on the boards!

About twenty minutes into 10,000 B.C., the new prehistoric adventure from director Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow) I realized why my trip to see the movie was a reluctant one, why my instincts for months had been to let this one slip past my radar into home video obscurity. 10,000 B.C. isn’t for me. It isn’t for the discerning adult ready to pick apart historical, social, economical and whatever-ical problems at every turn. This is a movie for kids. Big visuals and classic themes like destiny, loss, sacrifice and family in a genre setting meant to make an impression on the most impressionable people of all: 4 to 12-year-olds.

At this twenty minute mark, when I realized who the target audience was, it was like I was seeing the movie with fresh eyes. I was able to tap into my inner child and enjoy the movie from a new perspective. That's something I NEVER would have thought was possible after the months of bland promotion that indicated good visuals but an uninformed sense of history.

The moment that set me free was an encounter that our young hero (a dreadlocked Steven Strait that you wouldn’t recognize form his roles in Sky High and The Covenant) has with a saber tooth tiger, so obviously a cartoon that you half expect him to start telling you what’s GRRRRREAT! (The mammoth stampedes and sweeping temple shots make for much more impressive visuals.) The tiger, trapped under a beam is sure to drown in the rising rainwater of the pit the two have fallen into. Our hero, just as he’s about to kill the beast three times his size feels a moment of pity and decides to set him free. As he does he reminds the tiger not to eat him once he’s capable of doing so.

It was a brief moment of levity that the movie sorely needed after 20 minutes of ancient prophecies and rampaging warlords setting the stage. In that moment I knew to let out a laugh and relax a little. From then out I took the good with the bad, trying not to let the occasional historical inaccuracy or green-screened chase sequence ruin what was turning out to be a pretty good adventure in the tradition of the old pulp serials of the 1930’s. (Here’s a link to a gentlemen much smarter than I who had no problem bashing those inaccuracies. As well someone should. If kid’s are the target audience then someone should be looking out for them. 10,000 B.C.’s greatest flaw is that it choose to take place at a specific time. )

The story follows our hero as he crosses the land in search of his captured townsfolk including a blue-eyed beauty (Camilla Belle who manages to pull of cavewoman chic with a lot of class) who’s predestine to fall in love with a warrior that will set their people free. Guess who that is? It’s a familiar theme but so are many of the major plot points that 10,000 B.C. touches upon. Absentee fathers with mysterious agendas, true love, birthright, destiny, etc. All of these themes would stick out in a movie that took itself too seriously but feel very comfortable here inside the structure of the classic adventure of the boy no one expects to be a hero. Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter, King Arthur… he’s just another underdog making good. He just did it 10,000 years before Jesus made it cool.

10,000 B.C. is corny and predictable but if you think about it, so are New Hope, Willow, Planet of the Apes and The Princess Bride. All movies that we've grown up on and admired in one way or another despite the fact that they are just visual playgrounds recycling classic themes in a specific genres. I'm not saying that 10,000 B.C. is the next Star Wars, but your 5-year-old may disagree with me.

Rating: 6 out of 10 - I’m really impressed with how much this movie did not suck. That may sound harsh but the previews made it look terribly generic and completely dead behind the eyes. It’s far from ground breaking but there’s something here reminiscent of a simpler time in film. It’s movies like this fifty years ago that made it possible for Spielberg and Lucas to really raise the bar for us.

The obvious problem is that 10,000 B.C. makes no effort of its own to raise or even hold that bar up a little. It’s comfortable being a good-looking time capsule and that may be the difference between it representing the best of the best of the Prehistoric genre and fading away with the majority of the underdeveloped trash we get week to week.

I’ll pass. I can appreciate what they were able to do here, but I doubt I’d appreciate it more than three or four times before I grew tired of it. Really good-looking stampedes of animals that haven’t existed in a really long time can only go so far.

Get Smart - Warner Brothers is pushing The Dark Knight hard right now, and that’s great but I’ve had time to get used to that trailer. The one that caught my eye in this afternoons trip to the multiplex was the new Steve Carell movie Get Smart. Updated from the classic television series of the same name about a bumbling secret agent who slips, trips and stumbles his way into defeating the bad guys every time.

I’ve always been aware of the television series from the late 60’s that stared Don Adams as Maxwell Smart/Agent 86, but I admit that I’ve never seen more than 5 minutes of the show at any given time. When I revealed this on last weeks episode of the Triple Feature, Tom told me it was like Inspector Gadget without the gadgets. I don’t think that make sense but I’m still excited to check out this movie with virgin eyes from a fresh perspective. The tone and cast list seems spot on to deliver a really fun take on the spy world, even from a property that was cancelled nearly a decade before I was born.

Something I’m particularly excited about is a direct-to-DVD tie-in movie featuring two supporting characters, Bruce and Lloyd the agents IT guys. GS: Get Bruce and Lloyd stars Masi Oka from Heroes and Nate Torrece from Studio 60 and those Capital One commercials with David Spade. The pair are featured in Get Smart as supporting characters, and this adventure shows them on their unseen task.

This is a brilliant tie-in concept that I wish more movies took advantage of. Anything that enhances the experience, especially in a series like this that just begs for more content, is always a good thing. I’m keeping my eye on this for sure.

In other trailer news, this one hasn’t hit theater’s yet but following the released picture of Robert Downey Jr. as a black dude comes the official teaser trailer for Tropic Thunder, with the fantastic tag line “Shit Blows Up�. I don’t have anything to say about the controversy because… well, because I’m too white to have an opinion before hearing all the facts, but the movie looks like explosive fun. It features Danny McBride (Hot Rod, Drillbit Tailor, The Heart Break Kid) who is easily one of the funniest people on the planet right now so my hopes are high.

Lastly, (from JoBlo.com) all you Incredible Hulk fans will have something to cheer (or sulk) about on Wednesday when the brand new trailer for Edward Norton’s take on Hulk hits TV. MTV, VH1, SpikeTV and all their subsidiaries will be spotlighting the teaser before its big screen debut on Friday with Doomsday.

Do you have a “B.C.� that you’d like to share? Feel free to post your favourite 10,000 B_____ C_____’s on the board here.

Looks like Warner Brother’s is in the Bone business. From /film I heard the great news that one of the most popular indie comics of all time is finally headed for the big screen. No word yet on whether it will be live action or animated but I’m just happy there’s news.

We may be talking about that tonight on the Triple Feature as well as the latest releases including 10,000 B.C. and the infinitely awesome heist movie, The Bank Job. Tune in tonight at 10 PM EST to hear what we have to say and share your thoughts live! Thanks for reading, gang!