10,000 BC

[brdgt]

I am going to channel alexeye and review 10,000 BC.

OK, first off - this has to be the funniest movie I've seen in a long time. See, we start off in the tundra (c. 10,000 BC), where a little tribe of mammoth hunters are experiencing the megafauna extinction. But, alas, in addition to this "four legged demons" come and enslave them! (why and how a bunch of Arabs riding modern horses with stirrups (not invented until c. 500 BC in Asia) and saddles (c. 800 BC in the Middle East) got all the way to Canada just to kidnap 10 dreadlocked mammoth hunters might be the first question you ask, but I was wondering where they got the metal manacles a good 9,000 years before the Iron Age.

A few of our poor tribesmembers survive and send off their three remaining hunters to get their people back (oh and there's some sort of love story between our hero and the tribes' prophesied savor, whose power derives from her blue eyes - you know, because white people always save brown people from themselves). They face the terrible "white rain" on their way to Mordor (see, in addition to ripping off plot devices from Lord of the Rings, the film suggests that people who live in the tundra do NOT have an independent word for snow, but rather use a modified word of something that doesn't happen in the tundra).

They finally make it out of the tundra and immediately step into the jungle, with no ecotone whatsoever. In fact, as they walk into the jungle and one characters says "I'm hot" you can literally see the snow covered mountains behind them. Then they get attacked by carnivorous ostriches who had been extinct for two million years - but hey, who am I to say what happened in this strange ecology of Canada/Africa/Egypt/Southeast Asia?

We get through the jungle to Africa, where our hero falls into a pit used to catch animals. It starts to rain and he realizes there is a saber tooth tiger in there with him! The poor kitty is trapped under some carefully hewn timber, so our hero SAYS TO THE CAT "Do not eat me when I save your life!" and sets the nice kitty free. Of course, the tiger just gives him a snarl and LEAVES HIM ALONE! Two minutes later, our heroes discover agriculture and a bunch of Kenyans, but are accepted by the tribe because the kitty shows up again, REMEMBERS our hero, and makes the Kenyans believe our hero is their hero (oh, and you might wonder how they can all talk to each other? See one of the mammoth hunters made this trip before and taught everyone his language - handy, no?).

The tribes of Africa and our mammoth hunters set off to bring down the EgyptioAztec empire that has been enslaving their people, chasing them through the desert, only to lose them when the Arab slave traders get on their BOATS and sail off to their city. Our heroes follow them through the desert, with the poor Africans dropping like flies, while the mammoth hunters figure out astronomy and they make it to the Lost City of Atlantis, where the EgytpioAztecs are using mammoths as pack animals (how they feed the slaves or the mammoths in the desert is not explained).

Needless to say, our hero starts a slave uprising, gets the mammoths to help out, and "three hundreds" the big bad guy. He gets the girl (who, of course, has not been raped during this whole ordeal), but she dies, but then she comes back to life, the Africans give them 10 seeds and they go back to the tundra and live happily ever after.

Oh! And I would be remiss to not point out the interracial, underage slash going on at the end of the film - there's something for everyone!

Best. Movie. Ever.

Comments

[monkeyhouse.livejournal.com]

wow. i can't believe you spent money on that.

[brdgt.livejournal.com]

I didn't! I had a Blingo movie pass - but honestly, it was so funny I would have paid to see it. And we weren't the only ones - you could hear fits of laughter all over the theatre.

[monkeyhouse.livejournal.com]

makes you wonder whether it wasn't the movie studio's intention to release it as a comedy!

[antarcticlust.livejournal.com]

It was fun, though sadly not in the way I hoped. At least the mammoths LOOKED good! :)

I can't wait to write my own review.

[alexeye.livejournal.com]

i'm not going to get to this while it's in the theater (BUMMER), so if you have any interest in doing a guest snack, let me know.

god, but i still wish there were dinosaurs.

[brdgt.livejournal.com]

The predator terror birds are pretty close, but I don't see why they couldn't have thrown in a T-Rex.

[h-loves-c.livejournal.com]

This might be my favorite phrase of all time:

...our heroes discover agriculture and a bunch of Kenyans...

I have to find a way to work this into a regular conversation.

"What do you want to do for lunch?"
"I don't know, how about agriculture and a bunch of Kenyans?"

[brdgt.livejournal.com]

The scene is priceless:

They walk up to this burning African village (located somewhere in Texas, I believe) and notice this patch of grass amongst the desert (why grass instead of corn or wheat, I don't know, maybe the Kenyans thought that a lawn was a bigger priority than food). They crouch down and touch it and one them picks up a hoe and looks curiously at it. I leaned over to antarcticlust and said "look, they discovered agriculture!"

[were-duck.livejournal.com]

Hah hah, awesome. I should have gone with you guys.

[wyoluvr.livejournal.com]

well, until you mentioned the interracial underage slash, i wasn't going to see this, but hey! interracial underage slash! it's like they made the movie just for me.

[jediwonderboy.livejournal.com]

WOW.

This sounds like the best science fiction/fantasy film ever.

[brdgt.livejournal.com]

Except it didn't have gratuitous sex and violence, making still a step below Conan the Barbarian.

[dragon-chick.livejournal.com]

Oh god. And people actually wondered why I didn't want to see this, "But I thought you liked history!"

/cringe.

[antarcticlust.livejournal.com]

I will say that the ten to twenty minutes of screen time featuring mammoths was completely worth the price of admission, in my humble opinion. At least they got THEM right.

[brdgt.livejournal.com]

Well... I read that the whole "lead bull" thing is made up - if they were anything like modern elephants it was a lead cow.

[antarcticlust.livejournal.com]

Yup. See my comment below. :)

[squiggle.livejournal.com]

wow, awesome review. i totally want to see this now :)

[brdgt.livejournal.com]

Just go in ready to laugh and roll with it!

[antarcticlust.livejournal.com]

I couldn't tell you yesterday during the film, but the mammoths and mastodons having tusks has actually yielded some interesting data. The tusks grow annual rings, with the thickness representing health, just like trees. They found that at around a certain age, male tusks' rings get really thin for a while, and then thicken again, but this is absent from female rings. This is interpreted as the females living in herds and essentially kicking the males out, who go through a period of sub-par nutrition while they basically wander around and figure their lives out.

[raynorgrace.livejournal.com]

You win movie reviews!

[brdgt.livejournal.com]

I had a lot of fun writing it!

[angels-ember.livejournal.com]

That sounds TERRIBLE!

I'm thinking it'll warrant a trip to the budget theater in a few months.

[brdgt.livejournal.com]

It's officially so bad it's good.

[sasha-feather.livejournal.com]

It was great to see this movie with a geographer and a historian! Those are two areas of knowledge I'm weak in.

As a feminist SF viewer, I noticed that this movie definitely does not pass the Alison Bechdel Rule (http://alisonbechdel.blogspot.com/2005/08/rule.html). And there are a lot of men traveling and fighting together, which means it has great slash potential... that is, if anyone actually cared about the characters.

I expected the father to turn up, but that never happened.

[brdgt.livejournal.com]

Oh my god - I'd never see a movie again if I followed that rule!

[sasha-feather.livejournal.com]

Oh, me neither! I often hate the female-centric movies and TV shows.