Land of the Lost: 10 Things I Hated, 5 I Didn’t

Posted by Robert Fure (robert@filmschoolrejects.com) on June 5, 2009

**As usual, the 10 and 5 probably has some SPOILERS so deal with it. But it’s not like this is The Usual Suspects or anything.***

First let me say “hate” is a strong word that doesn’t really apply, but “10 Things I Didn’t Like, 5 I Did” seemed unwieldy.  This movie isn’t, say, Observe and Report, which earned my scorn, but rather a comedy that just doesn’t know what it’s doing.  The film has all the camp of the old Land of the Lost TV episodes (which weren’t very good) and would seem to want to appeal to children, but the film tries to appease an older, but still immature, movie-going audience and pushes the bounds of its PG-13 rating.  Anywho.

10 Things I Hated

10.  Sleestaks. These reptilians have never been all that frightening, but in this movie they don’t really do anything other than slowly shuffle.  Why not update them to be awesome?

9.  No 3D? This film screams to be in 3D and it would have made a huge difference.  Films in 3D don’t get criticized as hard for…

8.  Poor CGI. It’s not that the CGI is poorly done, it’s just that there is so much of it that as a cost cutting procedure most of the stuff doesn’t have great texture or realism. It’s cartoonish.

7.  Not Enough Leonard Nimoy. He has an instantly recognizable guest voice spot, but it is literally 3 lines.  He was done in 10 minutes that day.

6.  Will Ferrell. This guy pretty much ushered in a new era of comedy based around the Ron Burgundy-type character.  Unfortunately, that type of character is old and tired, but Ferrell still hasn’t given up the ghost.

5.  Murder. This bothers me in a lot of films these days, where innocent people (or Sleestaks) get murdered by the heroes.  In this film, plenty of Sleestaks are revealed to either be under mind control or as sort of, like, cop-type dudes who are just doing their job.  Our heroes then knock them into a lava pit.

4.  Chaka. Didn’t really love his look and his jokes all revolve around fondling someone’s anatomy.  A few instances were funny in the beginning, basically whenever he abandoned the group for his own safety.

3.  The Jokes. This film didn’t try very hard with most of the jokes.  It was either Ferrell being Ferrell or McBride being crass or something involving poop, urine, or a monkey-boy groping someone.  This stuff can be funny of course, but in this film it seemed like they had nothing else to make us laugh with, so defaulted to urine and poop.

2.  Danny McBride. I am not a fan of this guy.  He is already trapped in the same character over and over again.  Until he brings something new to the table, I will continue not to care about anything he does.

1.  Not a Kids Film. Land of the Lost the TV show was most definitely for kids.  This movie most definitely is not.  If I took responsibility for any of the 8 bastard children I’ve abandoned I would have taken them to this movie thinking it was a kids flick or at least acceptable for them to watch.  Not so.  McBride’s character has a booby lighter and he shows a nude-boob coffee mug off.  He says “pussy” as in the curse word for vagina.  Will Ferrell mouths “Fuck you” to Chaka, which is funny, but entirely inappropriate.  There is more foul language and Chaka and McBride both squeeze Anna Friel’s boobs. Plus, Chaka also looks about ready to get down on Will Ferrell’s junk.  This movie gets stuck in the middle.  It wants to be available to younger audiences, hence the PG-13 rating.  It also wants to appeal to the Ferrell-McBride fanbase which is decidedly over age 17 and desperate for R-Rated comedy.  They mixed up the pot and came up with something too tame for older audiences and too crass for younger ones.

5 Things I Didn’t

5.  Theme Song. They manage to work in the old, laughable theme song in a pretty funny way.

4. No Kids. In the original, it was a family that got transported to the Land of the Lost.  This time, it was a group of adults, presumably so all the boob and ball grabbing would be incestuous.  But since I hate kids, I was glad.

3.  Will Stanton and a few other jokes. True, I don’t really like McBride because he plays the same character every time, but his character of Will Stanton made some funny observations throughout the film.  Basically he would point out bad movie logic as sort of a wink to the audience like calling out people on why no one was shocked any of this happened or other things like that.  I did laugh out loud a few times, but the meager laughs were spread pretty thin throughout.

2.  Matt Lauer. He is probably the funniest part of the entire film.  His comedic timing, deadpan, and scathing contempt of Dr. Rick Marshall is great.

1.  T-Rex. While Lauer may be the funniest part, the T-Rex is the best part.  He’s actually the most well-developed character of the bunch and has the biggest transformation from start to finish.

So there you go, my thoughts on Land of the Lost. Not a very entertaining film that struggles because it doesn’t know which audience to aim for so it to miss them all.

What did you think of Land of the Lost?

Read more articles by Robert Fure