10.000 A.C.

I was hoping to like this movie, to give it a better review than most might give it....but I couldn't. In the end, I had to agree with the reviewers here on IMDb, that this movie stinks. It's true.

It's also one of those films that starts off okay, lures you in, and then deteriorates. With 40 minutes to go in the two-hour film, you're ready to walk out but since you've invested 80 minutes you figure, "I might as well see it through the end." The last half hour then becomes like a session at the dentist's office in which you can't wait for the experience to be over.

Credibility is probably the worst aspect of this film. Seeing people 10,000 years ago in buildings that look pretty well-made and would do an architect proud today, and hearing people speak with British and other assorted accents - in the same tribe - for the time and place (Mideast or Northern Africa in 10,000 B.C.) almost makes one laugh out loud in spots.....yet this is supposed to be a serious movie. The special-effects were weak, especially with the saber-toothed tiger which not only looks very fake but is proportionally ludicrous. The mammoths didn't look at hokey, but they moved very woodenly, computer-like. This was mainly the reason I watched. I knew it might be stupid but I thought it might at least be fun with eye-popping effects. No, nothing was eye-popping here.

It was just dumb....and I didn't even get to the story part, if you want to call it that. Actually, that was the worst part of this film. The screenplay was embarrassingly bad. If you want details on the holes in this story and all the things that were impossible but shown here, check out the other reviews.

Folks: you can believe all the negative reviews here on IMDb. They are not lying.

first off, let me say i am a fan of Roland Emmerich's films like Independence Day,The Patriot etc. but this film is beyond a doubt the most grueling and awful test of patience i have ever endured . time stopped and i got a serious headache after watching this garbage. a $75,000,000 budget and you get poor actors and cgi from TV's "charmed". the "tiger" in Ice Age looked more real and even more menacing than the kitten that was in this movie no longer than 3 minutes. i thought the trailer looked good and went in the theater with an open mind . i am amazed by how bad it was . AMAZED! Come to think of it, i remember being more entertained watching paint dry!

You know how when you go to a cafeteria style restaurant and you see something you usually enjoy like lasagna. You get the lasagna and take a bite with the fond memories of the last time you ate it in a real restaurant. When the first taste hits your tongue and all hopes of future meal enjoyment are flushed down the toilet. 10,000BC is the cafeteria lasagna. It looks goods, has the potential to be great, you have fond memories of other movies in the same genre that were good, and then you watch it. It's edible but just barely. The movie had pretty good special effects and wasn't boring which is why I gave it a five. The dialog and acting were for the most part sub-par. The story didn't even make an attempt to suspend your disbelief. Forget historically inaccurate, it was ridiculous. If I were you I would catch the matinée or wait for someone else to pay for the cafeteria lasagna

To anyone who has ever yearned to see woolly mammoths in full stampede across the Alps, 10,000 BC can be heartily recommended. There's also a flock of "terror birds"--lethal ostriches on steroids--in a steaming jungle only a splice away from the heroes' snow-dusted alpine habitat. And lo, somewhere in the vastness of the North African desert lies a city whose slave inhabitants alternately teem like the crowds in Quo Vadis during the burning of Rome and trudge in hieratic ally menacing formations like the workers in Metropolis. That's pretty much it for the cool stuff. Setting movies in prehistoric times is dicey. Apart from the "Dawn of Man" sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey, only Quest for Fire makes the grade, and its creators had the good sense to limit the duologue to grunts and moans. 10,000 BC boasts a quasi-biblical narrator (Omar Sharif) and characters who speak in formed, albeit uninteresting, sentences--including a New Age–y "I understand your pain." But let no one say the storytelling isn't primitive. The narrator speaks of "the legend of the child with the blue eyes" and bingo, here's the kid now. When, grown up to be Camilla Belle, she's carried off by "four-legged demons"--guys on horseback to you--the neighbor boy (Steven Strait) who hankers to make myth with her leads a rescue mission into the great unknown world beyond their mountaintop. His name is D'Leh, which is Held, the German for "knight," spelled backward. So yes, there is some hidden meaning after all. 10,000 BC is the latest triumph of the ersatz from writer-director Roland Emmerich. Like Stargate (1994), Independence Day (1996), and The Day After Tomorrow (2004) before it, it's shamelessly cobbled together out of every movie Emmerich can remember to pilfer from (though to be fair, the section in per-ancient Egypt harks back to his own Stargate). Emmerich's saving grace is that his films' cheesiness is so flagrant, his narratives so geared for instant gratification, he can seem like a kid simultaneously improvising and acting out a story in his backyard: "P'tend there's this alien ... p'tend maybe he came from Atlantis or something...." Just don't p'tend it has anything to do with real movie-making.

Starring: Steven Strait, Camilla Belle, Cliff Cirtus, Joel Virgel. Director: Roland Emmerich.

After many months of waiting, I finally saw 10,000 B.C. and left the theater unsatisfied. The story was so predictable and its pacing was inconsistent (at some parts, I felt sleepy), in fact this may be the weakest Roland E. film in many years. The action scenes were nicely done though and the special effects (particularly on the creatures) have that photo-realistic look...this is where the film excels. I only wished that more creatures were features and the action scenes could have been extended to help the pacing.

When the story reached the pyramids, it reminded me so much of Stargate, only without the laser blasters. The concept of deities and gods was present but did not really add much to the plot...it only served as a villainous model.

I find it weird that the primary characters (for a change, no big stars among them) speak English on screen.

So is 10,000 B.C. a special film, one that could be "The 300 of 2008"? Nope, nothing special about it. It's nice however that a prehistoric setting was used for this adventure.

If you truly value your time and money, don't watch it and just wait for the DVD instead. If you're too hungry for adventure and special effects, go ahead watch.

Sharkey360 (visit Sharkey360.blogspot.com)