10 000

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!

When the child of blue eyes called Evolet is found holding the hands of her dead mother by the tribe of the mammoth hunters Yagahl, their Old Mother (Mona Hammond) tells that the little girl will fulfill an ancient prophecy, marrying the owner of the White Spear and bringing life to their people. Years after, Evolet (Camilla Belle) and the outcast hunter D'Leh (Steven Strait) are in love for each other and D'Leh should dispute the White Spear and Evolet with his rival Ka'Ren (Mo Zainal). However Evolet and many hunters are abducted by the Four-Legged Demons warlords to work as slaves in their distant fields. D'Leh, together with the owner of the White Spear Tic'Tic (Cliff Curtis), Ka'Ren and the boy Baku (Nathanael Baring) track the tribe of warriors trying to rescue Evolet and the Yagahl hunters in a dangerous journey through unknown lands. When D'Leh saves a saber-toothed tiger from death, he becomes the leader of oppressed tribes that help him in his quest for freedom, life and love.

I was reluctant to see "10,000 BC" because of the low IMDb Rating and many bad reviews. However, as a big fan of Camille Belle, I fortunately decided to see this underrated adventure. The entertaining story is a combination of "Apocalypto", "Quest for Fire" and "Stargate" with a romantic situation, supported by magnificent CGI and action scenes. It is funny to read reviews of people that expect historic accuracy in this type of movie; I recommend that they never watch "A Nightmare on Elm Street", for example, otherwise they may have trouble to sleep… My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "10.000 A.C." ("10,000 BC")

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

Although well shot in front of gorgeous vistas, on location in New Zealand, Namibia, and South Africa, 10,000 BC is just another loud, dumb, and eminently pointless CGI adventure from the tactless, talentless, hacky direction of Roland Emmerich.There’s a plot, believe it or not, something about the true love between some tribesman and a hot chick, set in the very distant past, and these rampaging marauders attack their peaceful prehistoric-era tribe and carry off the womenfolk, so our hero spends the next two hours of movie time trying to get her back.

But who cares, right? No one in his right mind would watch a Roland Emmerich movie for the plot. The man brought us Godzilla, Independence Day, and The Day after Tomorrow, after all. No, your focus here is supposed to be on the prehistoric-ness of the thing, like the wild, carnivorous birds, or the mastodons, or the sabre-tooth tigers. Oh, and the smoldering hotness of lurve that Our Hero and His Love can barely contain.

Your first clue that this won’t be much more than a silly bore is the simple fact that our noble hunters speak perfect, inflectionless English. No idea why. I’m not the biggest fan of subtitles, granted, but I think here they at least would have made sense. Instead, we have these perfectly coiffed young people with gleaming white teeth - as any prehistoric hunter would have - speaking the Queen’s English to each other. It’s bizarre and off-putting. These cool kids look like they fell out of a Gap commercial; they’d be dead in minutes if they actually had to fend for themselves on a tundra or in the jungle. They’re as believable as Ed Begley, Jr. at a biker rally. Which is not very believable.

And it’s not as if they get clever, intelligent dialog to mouth. D’Leh (heh, sounds like Delay) tells a vicious, trapped sabre-tooth tiger, “Do not eat me when I set you free!” See, because he doesn’t want to be eaten, and he figures that reasoning with the beast will do the trick. D’Leh, played by newcomer Steven Strait, is sort of a poor man’s Colin Farrell, complete with otherworldly eyebrows. He wants you to think he’s earnest and sincere, but instead you think he’s vapid and vain. Crazy! (”Do not eat me when I set you free!” That’s hilarious right there. Why, it’s right up there with “Throw me the whip, and I’ll throw you the idol!”) Besides, this whole pursuing-the-savages-who-stole-our-people thing was done much better only a few years ago in Mel Gibson’s Apocalpyto. Now, you might not buy into the notion of using an ancient Mayan dialect in a movie, but at least it made some sense. Using that dialect, with subtitles, there was a real sense of adventure and tragedy; here, the fluid English feels woefully inept and completely anachronistic.

Unlike Apocalypto, there’s scant fighting and mayhem here. The tribe (like that in Apocalypto) is a hunting tribe, so that explains why for much of the movie they run and hide and duck and cover. I will find you! What’s his name cries. And then he finds her and then loses her again, and he says, I’ll come back! And then he spends the next hour or so trying to find her. His One True Love is like a set of pretty car keys.

Back to that tiger, which makes a couple of appearances. Now, I like CGI as much as the next guy. It can very easily enhance a scene, make the unrealistic seem obvious and believable. But this tiger reminded me of the cyclops and other fantastical creatures you’d see in those old fifties Greek-epic movies, the ones featuring the work of the great Ray Harryhausen - basically, essentially, stop-motion animation. And that looks crappy here in good ol’ 2008.

10,000 BC isn’t meant to be a historical epic - the year 10,000 BC is used here merely to connote a Long Time Ago - which is fine in and of itself, but really isn’t anything compelling about it other than its setting. It’s predictable pap without much of a heart, instilling no compassion or feeling from its audience.

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)