The Land That Time Forgot

I don't understand all the terrible reviews. It wasn't the greatest movie that I have ever seen, but it was entertaining enough.

The original film and the novel were and still are a favourite of mine. Unfortunately this 2009 remake is possibly the worst film I have ever seen. Terrible acting. Even worse effects. Oh dear

I really wanted to like this movie as I have always liked C. Thomas Howell but unfortunately I can't say that I liked it. I can say that I watched it, but that's about it.

I was able to sit through it and that may be the best that Howell can hope for. The dialog was a bit unimportant and even somewhat silly at times. The whole thing seemed like a compromise - which I am sure to some degree (as with anything under budget constraints) it was.

There was no effort exhausted in building characters that you could care about or for that matter knew anything about. When someone got killed you just did not care - at all.

The more fascinating and cerebral aspects of this story were completely glossed over or avoided altogether; although I did find it interesting that there was a brief discussion on the details of refining petroleum. which I had expected would be ignored (okay in movies I guess).

Overall, it barely held my attention and came off as another lame Sci-Fi channel, low budget, bad CG feature.

Don't get me wrong, there were some things to like, but I think in this case, Howell probably had his hands tied as far as time/money are concerned and more money/time could have been invested in script, effects and filming.

I really wanted to like this -I've enjoyed this story since I was a child, and was looking forward to a more modern telling of it. Sadly, the acting was so forced, so deplorable, that it was actually painful to sit through this. Perhaps the movie actually improved toward the end -I'll never know. I wasn't able to handle watching this sad excuse for shovelware of a movie. I didn't go into this expecting a special-effects extravaganza. I just expected competent acting. I mean REALLY, when they insist on remaking movies, shouldn't they actually try to improve the performances? Sigh. I couldn't give it anything less than a 3 because the story itself is a timeless classic -the writing didn't fail here, the acting did. Not really worth the time. Thats about all I can really say.

Most Sci-Fi fans are prepared to tolerate a movies more notable deficiencies provided that the film has an interesting plot with state-of-the-art CGI. That the quality of the special effects were little better than 1975 movie means that this film has nothing to commend it whatsoever. The 1 point is for the women. They looked good even if they weren't called upon to act. What is the point in Hollywood making films like this with a budget so small that the movie appeared to have been made in one afternoon. Indeed frequent shots of the submarine showed the same seagulls unmoved! If Burroughs weren't already dead I think seeing this film might have killed him anyway. Not even Tarzan in super-CGI could have saved this turkey.