dreadlock schlock
Not even a caveman could take “10,000 B.C.” seriously. This prehistoric piece of beard-and-dreadlock schlock may be one of the best comedies of 2008, as long as you’re as stoned as Fred Flintstone. Otherwise, prepare for a mammoth disappointment. The latest picture from blockbuster king Roland Emmerich (“Independence Day,” “Stargate”) attempts to spit further back into the mists of time than both “Apocalypto” and “300,” to an age when men were men and mastodons were lunch. The hero of the piece is D’Leh (pronounced “delay”), who has dreadlocks, a neatly coiffed goatee and a body straight out of an ab-roller infomercial.
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He is in love with Evolet (Camilla Belle) who shares his hairstyle and way of gazing inanely at the horizon in lingering close-ups. When Evolet and the tribe are captured by mounted warriors, or “four-legged demons,” D’Leh embarks on a journey to save her — a journey which narrator Omar Sharif tells us is “long and dangerous.” Well, he’s right about the first bit. D’Leh traipses across boundless landscapes shot in New Zealand, Africa and Europe, which we are supposed to believe are all at convenient walking distance. He tracks down the bad guys to their home turf, where he finds thousands of slaves building temples to a false god, who may be an extra-terrestrial. Actually, if “10,000 B.C.” were set on another planet, it would be far more coherent, especially the bit with the flesh-eating dodo birds. But historical inaccuracy is the last thing Emmerlich has to worry about. Dialogue may not have been all that snappy in the stone age, but you’d hope for a bit of visceral, Apocalypto-style action, and at least one scene of someone being shish-kebabed on the tusks of a mammoth. But this slow, bone-headed PG-13 flick skimps on even basic gore, leaving no reason to watch it at all. “10,000 B.C.” opens in Moscow on March 13. |
