10,000 BC

I expected this movie to suck. I thought it would be an adrenaline ride with no plot that you can only fully appreciate if you see it in Imax 3-D - similar to (but worse than) Beowulf. Especially since it had gotten really terrible reviews and everyone who'd seen it told me not to waste the few bucks it would cost to rent it.

Well, I finally shelled out the money, and was pleasantly surprised to find that it was not only as exciting as the trailers promised, it did have a plot and was enjoyable. I will not pretend that it was a brilliant movie, because it just wasn't. It definitely had the premise of what could've been a triumph, but it just couldn't cut it.

There was some cheesy dialog, but mostly it was pretty original. The plot was something that could've been ripped off from any ancient folktale, but I think that the scriptwriters and directors did a decent job of making it their own. Seeing as it's supposed to be a legend, and proves itself to be more of a fantasy than historical epic, the historical inaccuracies can be forgiven.

All in all, it was a fairly good movie that was both thrilling and enjoyable. I can see why people didn't like it, but, honestly, they're being much too tough on it.

first off, let me say i am a fan of Roland Emmerich's films like Independence Day,The Patriot etc. but this film is beyond a doubt the most grueling and awful test of patience i have ever endured . time stopped and i got a serious headache after watching this garbage. a $75,000,000 budget and you get poor actors and cgi from TV's "charmed". the "tiger" in Ice Age looked more real and even more menacing than the kitten that was in this movie no longer than 3 minutes. i thought the trailer looked good and went in the theater with an open mind . i am amazed by how bad it was . AMAZED! Come to think of it, i remember being more entertained watching paint dry!

Well, aside from the historical inaccuracies that everyone has pointed out, this movie had horrid acting, insipid dialog, and a cliché plot line that any moderately skilled elementary school kid could have written. So what are the redeeming qualities of this movie? The scenery, some of the CGI, and that's about it. On a technical level, I found it hilarious that for all the hype about this movie, it was far worse than I could have imagined. Someone made a comment about the lighting of this movie. There were definitely inconsistencies in the lighting, which added to the list of things wrong with this movie and made it feel like perhaps it was a rushed project.

I think if this movie were made without any dialog except for the narrative, it would have been much more enjoyable as a whole.

After many months of waiting, I finally saw 10,000 B.C. and left the theater unsatisfied. The story was so predictable and its pacing was inconsistent (at some parts, I felt sleepy), in fact this may be the weakest Roland E. film in many years. The action scenes were nicely done though and the special effects (particularly on the creatures) have that photo-realistic look...this is where the film excels. I only wished that more creatures were features and the action scenes could have been extended to help the pacing.

When the story reached the pyramids, it reminded me so much of Stargate, only without the laser blasters. The concept of deities and gods was present but did not really add much to the plot...it only served as a villainous model.

I find it weird that the primary characters (for a change, no big stars among them) speak English on screen.

So is 10,000 B.C. a special film, one that could be "The 300 of 2008"? Nope, nothing special about it. It's nice however that a prehistoric setting was used for this adventure.

If you truly value your time and money, don't watch it and just wait for the DVD instead. If you're too hungry for adventure and special effects, go ahead watch.

Sharkey360 (visit Sharkey360.blogspot.com)

Although well shot in front of gorgeous vistas, on location in New Zealand, Namibia, and South Africa, 10,000 BC is just another loud, dumb, and eminently pointless CGI adventure from the tactless, talentless, hacky direction of Roland Emmerich.There’s a plot, believe it or not, something about the true love between some tribesman and a hot chick, set in the very distant past, and these rampaging marauders attack their peaceful prehistoric-era tribe and carry off the womenfolk, so our hero spends the next two hours of movie time trying to get her back.

But who cares, right? No one in his right mind would watch a Roland Emmerich movie for the plot. The man brought us Godzilla, Independence Day, and The Day after Tomorrow, after all. No, your focus here is supposed to be on the prehistoric-ness of the thing, like the wild, carnivorous birds, or the mastodons, or the sabre-tooth tigers. Oh, and the smoldering hotness of lurve that Our Hero and His Love can barely contain.

Your first clue that this won’t be much more than a silly bore is the simple fact that our noble hunters speak perfect, inflectionless English. No idea why. I’m not the biggest fan of subtitles, granted, but I think here they at least would have made sense. Instead, we have these perfectly coiffed young people with gleaming white teeth - as any prehistoric hunter would have - speaking the Queen’s English to each other. It’s bizarre and off-putting. These cool kids look like they fell out of a Gap commercial; they’d be dead in minutes if they actually had to fend for themselves on a tundra or in the jungle. They’re as believable as Ed Begley, Jr. at a biker rally. Which is not very believable.

And it’s not as if they get clever, intelligent dialog to mouth. D’Leh (heh, sounds like Delay) tells a vicious, trapped sabre-tooth tiger, “Do not eat me when I set you free!” See, because he doesn’t want to be eaten, and he figures that reasoning with the beast will do the trick. D’Leh, played by newcomer Steven Strait, is sort of a poor man’s Colin Farrell, complete with otherworldly eyebrows. He wants you to think he’s earnest and sincere, but instead you think he’s vapid and vain. Crazy! (”Do not eat me when I set you free!” That’s hilarious right there. Why, it’s right up there with “Throw me the whip, and I’ll throw you the idol!”) Besides, this whole pursuing-the-savages-who-stole-our-people thing was done much better only a few years ago in Mel Gibson’s Apocalpyto. Now, you might not buy into the notion of using an ancient Mayan dialect in a movie, but at least it made some sense. Using that dialect, with subtitles, there was a real sense of adventure and tragedy; here, the fluid English feels woefully inept and completely anachronistic.

Unlike Apocalypto, there’s scant fighting and mayhem here. The tribe (like that in Apocalypto) is a hunting tribe, so that explains why for much of the movie they run and hide and duck and cover. I will find you! What’s his name cries. And then he finds her and then loses her again, and he says, I’ll come back! And then he spends the next hour or so trying to find her. His One True Love is like a set of pretty car keys.

Back to that tiger, which makes a couple of appearances. Now, I like CGI as much as the next guy. It can very easily enhance a scene, make the unrealistic seem obvious and believable. But this tiger reminded me of the cyclops and other fantastical creatures you’d see in those old fifties Greek-epic movies, the ones featuring the work of the great Ray Harryhausen - basically, essentially, stop-motion animation. And that looks crappy here in good ol’ 2008.

10,000 BC isn’t meant to be a historical epic - the year 10,000 BC is used here merely to connote a Long Time Ago - which is fine in and of itself, but really isn’t anything compelling about it other than its setting. It’s predictable pap without much of a heart, instilling no compassion or feeling from its audience.