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Rating: Country: USA Release Date: June 24, 2008 Distributor: Warner Home Video Director: · Roland Emmerich Cast: · Steven Strait · Camilla Belle · Cliff Curtis · Omar Sharif Related Sites: · IMDb: 10,000 BC Grade: D+ Even the cool moments aren't as cool as you might hope.

I find that movie trailers these days give too much away. Harrison Ford movies, for example, are notorious for this. Sure, Indy 4's preview was kept pretty vague, and therefore enticing. But many of his films over the last decade or so have given away way too much. The trailer for "Random Hearts" gave away every twist in the film. Having watched "10,000 BC," I wish it's trailer had been less enticing and much more obvious, so I could have done something else with those 109 minutes last night.

I really wanted to like it. Honestly. I love the premise: humans and giant prehistoric beasts (but not dinosaurs) battling to survive in the Stone Age. But I was bored 20 minutes into it and by the end I felt I had been watching the clock more than the movie.

Possibly my biggest beef with the movie was the narration. Why was it being narrated? Veteran actor Omar Sharif provided the voice, but the voice was unwelcome. It felt like someone reading out of a fantasy book, ala "The Princess Bride," which worked in that movie because essentially the movie was about what was happening in the book. In the year 10,000 BC, written language was a pipe dream. The people of the Mesolithic were barely developing agriculture. So was Mr. Sharif telling the story in the oral tradition? Since he never appears on camera, who can tell? Either way, it was distracting and unnecessary.

The acting, by and large, wasn't bad. Relative newcomers Steven Strait and Camilla Belle perform reasonably well, though the plot was paper thin. Strait plays D'Leh, the outcast of his clan who becomes the "chosen one" while the Belle plays Evolet, the mysterious blue-eyed orphan and eventual love interest. Cliff Curtis plays Tic'Tic, the veteran hunter who mentors D'Leh. When the clan is overrun by "four-legged demons" (also known as slavers on horseback), Evolet and many able-bodied clansmen are marched across the vast and surprisingly varied land with D'Leh, Tic'Tic and a couple of lesser hunters giving chase.

The land itself is almost comical. 10,000 B.C. was not Pangaea. D'Leh's home is a cold, windy, craggy place, sort of like how I picture the Scottish highlands. His party marches over the Great Mountain, heavy with snow, and soon descend into a lush forested valley. Huh? Eventually they end up in a desert (of course, would want the sand to feel left out) where they encounter a seemingly African tribe. Let me point out that somewhere along this journey D'Leh fell into a pit where a saber-tooth cat was pinned. He talks to the cat--because that's obviously what one would do in that situation, and asks the cat to not eat him if he helps him escape. Apparently the cat agreed, prolonging the film by a good 45 minutes. When D'Leh's party reaches "Africa" the tribesmen are ready to run them through with their spears, until the cat shows up and growls a warning to them. The cat bounds away and is never seen in the movie again. D'Leh, by virtue of having a cat do his dirty work, is now the tribe's friend. He organized several neighboring tribes as a small army and sets off to rescue Evolet.

Now things get really screwy. Evolet and the other clanfolk are pressed into slavery as porters and laborers on a pyramid. So this is Egypt now? Well, there are smarmy, effeminate Egyptian-looking fellows overseeing the construction, and larger Egyptian-looking slavers cracking whips everywhere. But somewhere in the film, either in conversation or narration, they mention that the Pyramid God who has ordered the construction is from Atlantis. Nobody's ever really tried to do a good film on Atlantis or about the Mesolithic era of 10,000 B.C., apparently. Did I mention that the Egyptian fellows have also enslaved the mammoths D'Leh was trying to hunt in the first place? They're beasts of burden on this project. D'Leh manages to cause a stampede, where all disbelief simply evaporates. Not one mammoth manages to stomp anyone. There are bodies laying in their path down the slope of the pyramid, and I watched carefully as mammoth after mammoth deftly avoided every single person in their way. I paused the movie and checked the box cover--surprisingly this is a Warner Brothers film, not Disney. Huh. Who'd have guessed that? I finish the movie, completely unmoved by the tragic death and rather obvious resurrection of one of the main characters. 

From primitive humans who speak very typical English to mammoths who could never be beaten in a game of dodge ball, this film misfires at almost every turn. And that's a shame, because Steven Strait shows promise, Camilla Belle is lovely, and computer-rendered prehistoric beasts have been done very well and with more engaging stories by the BBC and the Discovery Channel in their Walking With Prehistoric Beasts series. Director Roland Emmerich did a fine job with Mel Gibson's "The Patriot," but "Independence Day" doesn't hold up that well after repeated viewings and "The Day After Tomorrow," much like "10,000 BC," relies too much on special effects.  Keep an eye out for more from Strait and Belle, but look elsewhere for prehistoric entertainment.