Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

Oh come on now, it wasn’t that bad. I’ll be the first one to tell you that Will Ferrell’s particular brand comedy is somewhat lost on me and even the movies of his that folks have considered ‘good’ have been lost on me. ‘Talladega Nights’ and ‘Anchorman’ come to mind right off the bat but Will Ferrell in a cameo? Now that’s a funny dude. When I saw the trailer for ‘Land of the Lost’ it did look like yet another special brand of Will Ferrell flick and truth be told, that’s exactly what it is, but even though the legitimate reviewing press (that doesn’t include me) has skewered this poor movie like a stuck pig I thought it was funny. Maybe not 100 million dollar budget funny… but funny.

In a slight variation of the same character my man Will plays in pretty much every movie he’s in, this time Farrell is Dr. Rick Marshall. Dr. Marshall is some kind of physicist who has made an amazing breakthrough in the field of time warps which has landed him on the Today show opposite Matt Lauer. Unfortunately for Rick the interview doesn’t go well leading Lauer belittling the physicist on national TV and Dr. Marshall subsequently making an attempt on Lauer’s life. Sure attempted murder doesn’t sound all that funny but it was.

Years later the defrocked doc is wasting away teaching elementary school science when pretty Oxford physicist Dr. Holly Cantrell (Anna Friel) shows up singing Dr. Rick’s praises, recognizing his true genius complete with proof of his accomplishments and curious if he finished constructing his flux capacitor… or whatever they called his device in this movie. Dr. Rick hadn’t actually got around to finishing the machine but you’d be surprised at what a pretty girl showing up on your doorstep will spur one to do. So Dr. Rick finishes this machine, he and Dr. Holly head out to the desert where

Holly found some transionic crystals or something, go on our little tour led by white trasherific tour guide Will Stanton (Danny McBride) and this is when the flux capacitor sends our heroes to an alternate universe, or the Land of the Lost.

The hi-jinks and mayhem kick in high gear as our heroes save one of the indigenous Neanderthals named Chaka (Jorma Taccone) from slaughter, they flee from the worlds most intelligent Tyrannosaurus Rex, avoid all kinds of pratfalls and dangers, meet some weird alien who claims that he can help them get home but not until our heroes can track down the lost flux capacitor which also plays show tunes. Don’t ask.

I vaguely remember the original Land of the Lost TV show since I was around six years old when it first aired, so the fact that this movie exists doesn’t necessarily insult me as it has some which I think did allow me to enjoy ‘Land of the Lost’ for what it was. And what it was, quite simply, was a funny movie. Sure there’s nothing particularly innovative about the movie with Farrell playing the same pompous boob he’s been playing since started doing George W. Bush on SNL and Danny McBride playing the same white trash psycho he’s been playing since I saw him for the first time in ‘The Foot Fist Way’ but this is what both of these cats do so why reinvent the wheel? Sure Anna Friel exists in this movie as plot furthering device with a cute accent in short shorts and a tank top a couple sizes too small but better that she’s in the movie in that tight tank top than sitting on the sidelines somewhere else.

So faced with simple certainties all we want director Brad Silberling to do is orchestrate some laughs for us and this movie consistently does just that. Most of the time the humor is fairly broad but every once in a while it will get a little clever on us but I was never bored with the time I spent with ‘Land of the Lost’ and found it consistently amusing.

But here’s where they screwed this thing up. Due to the ‘liberalness’ of the PG-13 rating our filmmakers took full advantage of this and as such this is a movie that’s probably a little bit too adult for its own good. This movie is kind of advertised as a family movie, complete with happy meal tie-ins, and it really isn’t. I know, after seeing it, that I wouldn’t feel all that comfortable taking my kid to see it as opposed to the completely awful ‘Night at the Museum’ sequel which I would only keep my child from watching to shield him from looking at crappy movies. Now if they did childproof this movie a bit I doubt it would be nearly as funny as I found it to be but it probably would’ve made a lot more money and they might’ve been able to squeeze some crappy sequels out of it but I don’t think that is to be for this one.

Whaddayagonna do? I thought it was funny and I don’t even find Will Farrell all that funny. Check it out when it comes on DVD in a couple of weeks. Maybe it’ll be an Unrated NC-17 version.