A movie with no bite

10,000 B.C. will quickly go the way of the dinosaurs.

By Steve Persall, Times Film Critic
Published March 7, 2008

D'Leh (Steven Strait), the hero of 10,000 B.C., comes face to face with a saber-toothed tiger.
	[Warner Bros.]

Roland Emmerich's 10,000 B.C. sets back movie adventure at least 12,008 years. This prehistoric potboiler plods along like a mammoth, with a plot as woolly.

Hoo, baby, where do we begin?

Maybe with the thunderous musical score straining to make everything at least sound epic. Or an elaborate backstory - as if a dozen millennia isn't going back far enough - ponderously proposed by narrator Omar Sharif. We could start with pretty, vacant actors defying evolutionary concepts, or "action" unbecoming that word's definition.

But let's begin with Emmerich, who cements his reputation as the poor man's Michael Bay Transformers, Armageddon. But whileBay's testoster-orgies have the money on the screen,10,000 B.C. looks like the cash is in Emmerich's pocket - a reported $75-million budget spent on airfares to New Zealand locales and computer doodles.

Ringo Starr had more convincing surroundings inCaveman. Even that flop had the good sense to use a phony prehistoric language. Everyone except bad guys in this movie speaks proper English. Hasn't Emmerich learned anything from Mel Gibson about the veracity of lost tongues? More likely, he doesn't wish to be bothered by such details.

Less attention is paid to the plot, in which a hunter-gatherer named D'Leh (Steven Strait) loves Evolet (Camilla Belle), the only blue-eyed maiden in the land. Evolet is kidnapped by warlord bullies whose leader (Affif Ben Badra) has one milky-blind eye, the surest sign of movie villainy. Conversely, D'Leh's eyes are dreamy.

10,000 B.C. quickly becomes a chase movie, with D'Leh propelled by a desire to shore up the cowardly reputation of his father. But D'Leh has his own guilt: He earned the coveted ivory staff of bravery for an act that wasn't brave but did show ingenuity, a trait that apparently didn't mean much way back when.

Before you can say Clan of the Cave Bear, D'Leh is rounding up other tribes shoved around by the warlords to exact revenge. The quest seems longer than the movie's running time.

There is a scene in which D'Leh and a sidekick skulk through tall grass and a giant dino-chicken comes uncomfortably close. "What was that?" the sidekick asks, and I fully expected D'Leh to answer: "I don't know; nobody has named it yet."

Then there are those huge woolly mammoths that D'Leh's tribemates have no trouble chasing for food, though they cringe at the sight of horses ("four-legged demons"). And that saber-toothed tiger selling the movie in ads could probably be neutralized with a large ball of yarn.

10,000 B.C. needs more creatures, less grandiose posing and maybe Raquel Welch in a prehistoric bikini. To use one of Starr's Caveman words, this movie is ca-ca.

Steve Persall can be reached at (727) 893-8365 or persall@sptimes.com Read his blog at blogs.tampabay.com/movies.

Review

10,000 B.C.

Grade: D

Director: Roland Emmerich

Cast: Steven Strait, Camilla Belle, Cliff Curtis, Joel Virgel, Affif Ben Badra, voice of Omar Sharif

Screenplay: Roland Emmerich, Harald Kloser

Rating: PG-13; intense action violence

Running time: 109 min.

[Last modified March 7, 2008, 00:19:45]