A.) Sci-fi enthusiasts looking for a serious reinvention of the campy television series?
B.) 30-something hipsters who want to see a jokey romp based on a show they used to watch as kids?
C.) Children who want to see Will Ferrell chased around by a cartoon dinosaur? (Which is what the marketing has been based primarily on.)
The movie is a remake of the television series, but in mostly superficial ways.
After the scene with the little kid asking the probing question about weed, Ferrell is inspired, in part by a young scientist (Anna Friel, leaden and unfunny) and in part by a junk food bender (a boon for the product placement people – restaurants become dialogue!), Ferrell builds his theoretical machine. Soon enough they’re out in the desert testing it, and are sucked into a swirling vortex (along with Danny McBride’s redneck roadside huckster). Soon they’re on the other side of the portal, in a mystical realm inhabited by dinosaurs, monkey men, bubble-eyed aliens, and sets that despite costing $100 million look like they were cobbled together with paper-mâché and Elmer’s glue.
As far as plot goes, there’s really none to speak of. The three of them (along with an outcast monkey man played by Andy Samberg’s writing partner, Jorma Taccone) dash around the jungle, desert, and mountains, experiencing weird shit, running away from a T. rex and making pop culture references. At some point an alien with the voice of James Lipton sends them on a somewhat essential quest, which could result in them zapping themselves home, but it’s really just a thin excuse for more pointless dashing.
Up until the halfway point, “Land of the Lost” is achingly, groan-inducingly bad. It’s unfunny, it’s slow, and for all the expensive digital trickery, never really dazzles. But then it starts to get kind of fun. It’s still messy, it still misses as much as it hits, but about the time our heroes are being chased around a sand dune littered with icons of various time zones, by a pair of carnivorous dinosaurs, it at least manages to entertain. Or maybe by that point your defenses have been lowered by all the inane shit you’ve seen up until that point.
It doesn’t hurt that the chase sequence is followed by a prolonged drug sequence (yes, this is a movie that was marketed towards children) that reaches some truly sublime levels of silliness (spoiler alert: there’s a giant crab). Still, by the end, the movie never maintains any tonal consistency for long enough to be really enjoyable.
Part of this is due to the fact that direct Brad Siberling is a kind of stylistic succubus, content to simply borrow instead of going through the effort of creating his own look. He’s gone from aping Spielberg (“Casper”) to Herzog (“City of Angels”) to parroting Tim Burton (“Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events”). Here he goes for an ambling Judd Apatow framework while staging elaborate action sequences that he shoots like a film student who was really impressed with Paul Greengrass’ ‘Bourne’ movies (all shaky hand-held, without much reason). His placement of the camera often seems profoundly wrongheaded, like he hasn’t taken into consideration that months down the line, there will be a giant cartoon dinosaur standing next to Will Ferrell (one that has a very, very long tale).
One wonders what Adam McKay, who serves here as an executive producer and has directed Ferrell in ‘Anchorman,’ “Talladega Nights,” and “Step Brothers” (as well as his Tony-nominated G W. Bush performance in “You’re Welcome, America”), would have done with the material. Considering McKay and Ferrell’s penchant for pushing their comedy into truly absurd situations that border on the surreal, they would have probably cooked up a Land of the Lost that was unlike anything people were expecting. And whatever that was, they probably would have maintained it for the entire movie.
Instead, we get a movie that’s so schizophrenic and scattershot that virtually no one comes away unscathed (Danny McBride thankfully makes it out with only minor scrapes and bruises). Whatever your expectations are for “Land of the Lost,” you’ll probably leave unfulfilled. Unless you were really looking forward to Will Farrell saying “Fuck you” to a guy in an unbelievably phony-looking ape costume in a movie that’s supposed to be for little kids. If that’s what you’re looking for, then you’re in luck. Anybody else will be utterly lost. [C-] – Drew Taylor