Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

From French director Roland Emmerich, who previously brought us ‘Independence Day’ (yay!) and ‘Godzilla’ (BOOOO!) we have his latest big budget CGI laden epic action flick with ’10,000 B.C.’ Think of ’10,000 B.C.’ as ‘Apacolypto’ without all the heavy thinking, then remember that not a heck of a lot of heavy thinking was required to watch ‘Apocalypto’.

Back in the day, and I mean way back in the day, a weird mystical woman (Mona Hammond) grabs the head of a blue-eyed girl and starts having weird mystical vision about four legged demons (read… horses) and the destruction of their land. Fortunately her mystical vision also describes how this blue-eyed child along with her eventual warrior man is going to save them all. This particular tribe was in all kinds of famine type trouble before this mystical prophecy prompting the leader of the tribe (Kristian Beazley) to hand over his white leadership spear to his right hand man Tic Tic (Cliff Curtis), abandon his young son and try to find a way to save his people as he has no time to wait for children to grow and prophecies to be fulfilled.

Years later Tic Tic watches over the tribe and his friends son D’Leh (Steven Strait) who wishes to claim the white leadership spear as his own during the ceremonial group hunt by killing the Minnock – or Wooly Mammoth as we called it post B.C., and claim his woman, the blue-eyed Evola (Camilla Belle). Thing is the other young boys don’t like D’Leh playing in their reindeer games because they think he’s the son of a coward. Regardless, a set of bizarre circumstances leads to D’Leh claiming the prize, but alas with no honor. None of that matters much now anyway because soon the four legged demons, just as prophesized, show up from over the mountains and take most everybody away into slavery, including the blue-eyed Evola, which will leave Tic Tic, D’Leh and his best friend Moha (Reece Ritchie) to travel over the mountains through sleet, snow, deserts and rainstorms to set their people free.

The journey they face will be a treacherous one as they will have to deal with three ton saber tooth tigers, a gaggle of the absolute angriest set of man-eating ostriches you will ever want to see, various warring tribes and eventually the four legged demons and the big birds they ride inside of, all at the command of a god who walks among men. What chance could they possibly have to set the blue-eyed enchantress free? Just so you know, I’m not the one who was carrying on about Evola’s blue-eyes. I could care less about the color of the woman’s eyes. Omar Sharif, who was the narrator of this nonsense, kept harping on about the color of her eyes.

The comparison of ‘Apocalypto’ to ’10,000 B.C.’ are initially valid because the narratives are somewhat similar. Both feature young men who have lost their fathers and must go on a treacherous journey to free their women, face a lethal foe, deal with big cats, listen to crazy people spout prophecies, mess with pharaoh type characters who think they are gods and finally become men and triumph, just like their old dudes told them to. But ’10,000 B.C.’ is so banal and simple minded that it’s almost insults your intelligence at every turn. The stilted and halting way the decidedly English speaking actors chose to speak English for their characters was off-putting for one, as they apparently saw some old Lone Ranger shows and thought that mimicking Tonto was a good starting point. I halfway expected a character to turn and say ‘Them many bad men kimosabe’ at one point. The attempts to make the otherwise lovely blue-eyed, pointy nosed high cheekboned, decidedly European Camilla Belle look ethnic was particularly laughable, and she struggled the most with whatever Emmerich was trying to do with the language. Actor Cliff Curtis, as usual, comes through unscathed mainly because he’s a fine actor and secondly he chose to speak in his normal voice, as everybody else probably should have done. I will admit hearing the made up African war cries, BAKALAKAKA LEH! does get you all fired up.

The story itself is pretty basic and unoriginal, just as the framing of the story suffers from the same lack of originality, but that doesn’t mean that ‘10,000 B.C’ isn’t entertaining. As you would expect from a Roland Emmerich film the CGI effects are fantastic as watching a herd of Wooly Mammoths roaming the plains, which I’m guessing is probably pretty hard to get a hold of without the aid of a computer, is almost majestic. I don’t know what was up with the man-eating ostriches, but I sure am glad they didn’t survive the Pleistocene period. Criticisms aside, this a big time, great looking, vast movie and though it is intensely silly, it’s never boring and if you get loaded up with enough popcorn, diet Pepsi and Jujubees you should have a good time with it.

Where as Mel Gibson, however you may feel about the man, creates monumental emotional epics, Roland Emmerich crafts fast moving live action cartoons, which there will always be space for at the Cineplex. ’10,000 B.C.’ is about as cartoonish as it gets.