Movie Review: 10,000 BC

I didn't have much idea what to expect going into this movie aside from wild historical inaccuracies.

Up on a snowy mountain top, above the tree line, above the cloud layer, there's a tribe of people who wear dreadlocks and goatees. A herd of woolly mammoths passes by often enough for them to get most of their food from it. On top of a mountain. There's also plenty of firewood lying around. On top of a mountain. Above the tree line. But the mammoths have been passing less often and in fewer numbers. After a blue eyed girl comes the old woman of the village makes a prophecy about four legged demons coming to wipe them out. So the lead hunter leaves to investigate the demons and missing mammoths.

Jump forward 15 years or so. The lead hunter's son kills a mammoth, becomes lead hunter, and wins the heart of the blue eyed girl. Then the village is raided by people on domesticated horses - in the year 10,000 BC - who take several people as slaves, including the blue eyed girl. So lead hunter and a few friends go on a rescue mission. They follow the slavers over some even taller mountains - during the onset of winter - down into the jungle, into the tall grass where they're attacked by Rocs, into the desert where they make friends with people our hero's father once met and he fulfills one of their prophecies, befriends tribes of every race, goes to the river where they just miss sailboats - in the year 10,000 BC - carrying off the slavers. They march through the desert successfully because the lead hunter is the first person to follow a star successfully. They find where Atlanteans, who look like Indians, are building the pyramids using the mammoths and the slaves.

Blah, blah, free the slaves, save the girl, everyone goes home.

The special effects are fine, the mammoths look great, the story would makes Edgar Rice Burroughs proud, but the movie just isn't engaging. Maybe it's because I was on the leading edge of the cold that kept me from posting yesterday. Probably not.

See it at the dollar theater.