We saw Caveheart... I mean, 10,000 B.C. last weekend. It was dumb and fun. Most of the time I rolled my eyes and wanted to say the word "ignert" every other spoken line, but there were moments where I thought... weeeell, whataya gonna do? How can you take a movie seriously that defies all science and gives ancient people refined english with a Transylvania accents. Also, I guess to be primitive, you've got to have dread-locks, dirty faces and ultra clean teeth. Because, you know, back then, tartar control wasn't a problem. Just ask the English. Oh, and they must have names like "Tick Tick." Did anyone stop to think that that just might resemble a little known cartoon cave baby? Give you a hint... BAM BAM. WILLLLLLMAAAAAA! Okay, I can't resist. I've gotta list the dumb stuff, in no special order.
The fake blue eyes on the main chick... the goofy prophesies throughout... the goofy "old wise woman" prophet/narrator... the bizarre, ever-shifting accents in the same tribe (as if the director just said, "make it sound cave-ish. ACTION!")... the part where the hero lets the big hungry Saber-toothed tiger go and makes friends with him -Ala the Black Stallion... the whole first 45 minutes looked like it was filmed in my back yard in Springfield with a crappy green-screen ... the whole tribe-leader "white spear" thing... that bone-spear just didn't look very effective... they COMPlETELY ripped off The Edge (Anthony Hopkins, Aleck Baldwin and the Bear) with the spear-killing-Wooly Mammoth scene... the predictable prophesies from the old tribal prophet- let me guess, "one will come and lead the poor Flinstone tribe to freedom"... the Goofy prophet-woman spirit swap at the end with the chick with the blue eyes...
Okay, I'll stop there.
Verdict: So dumb. It was so dumb I forgot to bring my Madonna-genius doll and give it an I.Q. test. BUT, alas, it's so dumb that it's likable. It had Woolly Mammoths charging down a pyramid for crying out loud. Who can't like that? btw, did you just see the words "a pyramid?" Yes, yes, you did. The movie historian wunderkinds behind the scenes most surely flunked anthropology, geology, and um ... math. Try 3000 B.C. fellas. Let me introduce you to a little thing called "Wikipedia." And even at 3000 wasn't anything special as far as pyramids went. It was pretty ghetto and hardly big enough to stampede a bunch of Mammoths down it.
I saw so many elements from epic movies it was ridic. You had: Braveheart (the quintessential caveman "You are free cavemen!" speech) Dances with Wolves (the whole waiting to hunt the sparse Mammoths thing) Apocalypto (captured wife, being chased in the Jungle)... Jurassic Park 2 with the Raptors snacking on dudes in the long grass. Except in Caveheart they were big ugly ostrich things. But hey, it was cool anyway. The list could go on, even into Cinematic classics such as Legends of the Falls- itself a cinematic masterpiece rivaled only by this.
So, I say, see it. But see it for the saber-tooth and the Mammoths... however, the Mammoths in LOTR were off the hook a bazillion times cooler. Still, it was fun enough to buy a bucket of popcorn and slurp up a gallon of coke next to Fancypants. Maybe I could compare it to the old creature-features. They were dumb, campy and fun, as was 10,000 B.C.
To borrow Popcorn's rating scale I'd give it a 2 1/2 out of 5 popcorn kernels on the fun summer movie scale, even though it ain't summer yet.
Otherwise, I'd give it a B--- on a creature-feature curve, up from D+.
7 comments:
Been lurking all night (since I'm on a wait up vigil for out and about kernals) for a fresh post...this one was worth the wait! Hilarious...
This sounds like my kind of movie...
1. No thinking required to understand
2. It's better if you don't know history
3. The good guys win
4. Not too creepy-scary
Actually, the only thing missing is a little time travel and a couple of hot alien robots. That would make it just perfect!
Dude, this was the first movie in a loooonnng time where I mourned the money I spent on tickets.
To me, it was SO dumb that the fun-ness was taken out of it.
But the trailers made it look so good...
Popcorn! I love your rating system. The popcorn scale is cool.
Rob, sounds like its right up your alley.
Jeff, I hear you buddy.
Cach, yeah, the trailer was goofy. I knew what I was walking into.
The way you describe it Seth I'd say the writers just sat around drinking beer and trying to come up with stuff that would make people groan. Sounds like it was just shy of Monty Python; intentionally antagonistic to the viewer's sense of logic and history.
Thanks for going to see if for me.
Good review....you crackin' me up dude.
So true, man!
I saw this movie with my friends--thank GOD! Otherwise I'd have no one to make fun of it with. Had dreadlocks taken over the earth in 10,000 BC? And the names... I think the only one I could keep track of was "Dick-dick" who I think was middle-eastern. Speaking of which, you failed to mention the questionable ethnicity of the main tribe: the protagonist looked black-ish, Dick-dick was some sort of arabic mix, and the girl was most definitely white-Mexican. Or something. It was hard to tell for a few of them. And the constant scenery change-- they went from the lichen-covered hills of the tundra to the jungles of Asia, over to Kenya and back up to Egypt?
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