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How can you judge a film that deals with a time period we know little or nothing about? The same way you judge a film that deals with aliens attacking, animals who talk, or women who are president. You deal with it from how good a story it is and not on plausibility. In the new film 10,000 B.C. you have a pretty decent plot and fairly intriguing effects, but line after line of cheesy dialogue. This latter element negates the prior two making a film that you just can't take seriously or enjoy totally. The reaction from the audience was one where we all laughed at the serious parts and rolled our eyes at the attempts at humor. Everything had a reverse effect and self destructed. Granted, once that happened and you decided to make fun of the film, it actually became more enjoyable. You begin to look forward to the next thing to make fun of. 

Obviously we know the era this takes place from the title. Everything else is vague. We find this small tribe of hunters who are trying hard to survive in their frozen mountain village. Once a year they hunt the huge mammoths that troupe through, then wait a year for them to come back. When a group of
slave marauders attacks their village and hauls off members of the camp it is up to one young warrior to rescue them. His journey to free his people
leads him though snowy, subzero mountains, into a tepid Amazon type jungle with Ostriches that attack like Raptors. Then they are in the desert. So,
not sure where they are, but again the time period allows the writer to create whatever world he wants. It is odd but does not take away from the
film. The script does that all on its own.

The point of the story is not bad at all. You have a young warrior trying to become a man and overcome family obstacles. His major objective is to save
the girl he has loved from youth who has been carted away as well. So he is part Moses part William Wallace part Tomb Raider. So the adventure portion of the movie is not too bad. The main issue was the script. I would have preferred the entire movie be grunts and caveman dialect with English or no subtitles. That would have been better than seeing these prehistoric tribes who speak English and some with European accents. That made the delivery even that much more comical. As I mentioned, once you start making fun of the film you relax more and enjoy the ride. The ending is epic in look and feel and makes up for the first 2/3's of the film.

10,000 B.C. is rated PG-13 for sequences of intense action and violence. The action and violence are in the vain of Lord of the Rings though much milder.
Again, take this movie for what it is. If you go into it with very low expectations you will probably get a kick out of it. If you go in expecting some grand adventure of site and sound you will be highly disappointed. It is roughly an hour and a half long so it is doable if you know what to expect. But for the price of theater tickets what they are, it might be worth passing over. I only give 10,000 B.C. 2 out of 5 press on nails. 

Matt Mungle (3/07/08)

Matt is a member of the North Texas Film Critics Association (NTFCA) and co-hosts a weekly radio feature, The Mungles on Movies, with his wife Cindy.
For additional reviews, interview clips and great DVD giveaways, visit the website www.mungleshow.com

Review copyright 2008 Mungleshow Productions. Used by Permission.

Someone asked me if 10,000 BC was a remake of the Raquel Welch film of 1967 called One Million Years, B.C. No, no remake, her film had humans co-existing with dinosaurs, though this film has a jungle scene with giant birds that look suspiciously out of their element. The current movie, 10,000 BC has the women wearing dingy animal skins, the men bare-chested and most of the animal skins still on the computer-generated animals. Either way, forget about an intelligent timeline and just go with the flow. Language doesn’t seem to be a barrier. Even though there are different languages between tribes, somehow someone has taken the time to learn another’s language and communication is possible. That, friends, is about as high-brow as this movie gets.
 
The story of 10,000 BC has a small group of people living high in a mountain range (Central Asia?) and living from hunting mammoths. These lumbering beasts (wonderfully computer-generated) had provided food for centuries, but their number is dwindling (sound familiar) and hunts are harder to organize. The Wise Woman of the camp foretells a change when the woman with blue eyes comes and sure enough, there she is, a fugitive from her decimated village. Years later, the young woman (Camilla Belle) is wanted by every young man, but gives her heart to the young hunter (Steven Strait.) Before you can say, “mammoth,” the small camp is raided by “demons on four legs” (horsemen) and people chained together to be slaves. The young hunter and two friends go after the blue-eyed girl, and thus the chase begins that will lead everyone from cold mountains to hot jungle and hotter desert. They encounter black-skinned tribes, strange animals (saber-toothed tiger and birds the size of small aircraft) and a pyramid-building culture (reference: pre-Egyptian, from the stars or Atlantis, take your pick). The blue-eyed girl is prized wherever she goes, except by the chief pyramid-builder called “The Almighty.” Some genetic variations just aren’t wanted.
 
As the lead actress, Camilla Belle, shows her blue-enhanced eyes and that’s it for acting. Her performance hasn’t changed since the low-rated The Ballad of Jack and Rose in 2005 with Daniel Day-Lewis. Steven Strait, as the young hunter, fares better, though most of what he has to say is “Onward…” Strait was recently interviewed on a late-night television talk show about this film. He was in good shape for the movie and credited it to having had a mother who taught karate. As an actor here, he does OK, as does Cliff Curtis, who portrays a hunter- friend.
 
Computer generation is very good, which includes scenes of galloping mammoths, large pyramids, enormous mountains, boats with large sails and one gigantic saber-tooth tiger. Whether any of this could have happened is strictly speculation as the Giza pyramids are supposed to be no more than 5,000 years old and this film purports to take you back 10,000 or more. I wanted to know more about the pyramid-builders, why they feared the appearance of a blue-eyed girl, how they could tame mammoths, how long they were building these pyramids and why mammoth hunters with bare shoulders choose to sleep in snow.  No wonder mammoths disappeared. One sight of those desert sands and pyramids, squabbling about blue-eyed girls and the beasts just faded away.
 
Copyright 2008 Marie Asner
Submitted 3/15/08