Land of the Lost 2009

Anyone looking to watch Land of the Lost (LOL for short) for serious acting, stunning visual effects or witty comedy, stop right here. It's just not what you are going to get, so lighten up. Nobody liked this film. I didn't like this film, but just like a child that throws food all over the house, you still love that child and keep trying to force feed it asparagus and carrots and everything else that's good for it.

And that's just what we do with Will Ferrel's odd choice of movies here. Sometimes we're proud of Will's movies. We take them home, love and cherish them and put them in spots of honor in our movie collection. Other times we put them out for the yard sale the day after we buy them or just bring 'em back to where we bought them.

Once you get past the extremely low-budget look to the movie (which is sort of appropriate for LOL anyway), the ridiculous pretense (whoops, which is also sorta, um, like the original series), and the crappy acting (I think we're on a roll here), it's actually kinda fun to watch.

Will Ferrel plays Dr. Rick Marshall, a quantum paleontologist who's sole claim to fame was being ripped a new asshole by Matt Lauer (played by himself) on the eve of the release of his new book, as he tries to explain how time warps are necessary to solve our fossil fuel problem. Matt Lauer plays a fantastic nasty version of himself and eventually uses a fire extinguisher to subdue Marshall.

Cut away three years later, Marshall is in a class of some kind teaching kids about Tachyons when in comes Anna Friel playing the part of Holly Cantrell, Marshall's biggest and only fan. Coincidentally she's hot. She convinces him to fix or repair the tachyon machine and finds that the one place that has the best place to find tachyons is in Devil's Canyon. Or something like that. This is where they meet Danny McBride playing the character of Will Stanton, the redneck

Regardless of what you think about the movie, the cinematography was actually pretty well done. The script was actually pretty funny if you pay close attention to what Will Ferrel is actually saying everytime something happens.

"Captain Kirk's Nipples!"

"What a piece of crap! The machine, I mean, not A Chorus Line. I love Show tunes. They really tell the story of the human condition."

Just totally random weird shit. Completely serious.

Anyway, so Marshall winds up in another time/dimension/place/set with Holly and Will and immediately finds a viking ship and a Cessna. In the home movie he's making he describes Will as "Some trashy trailer park reject that smells like malt liquor and feet..." and Will says "I'm standing right here!".

Okay, not roll on the floor funny, but situationally funny.

Enter Chaka, some form of bipedal life (slightly monkey, kinda human) played Jorma Taccone who as it happens  to understand english within about 10 minutes of being introduced in the movie. Totally feasible, of course.

Anyway, enough of the plot. The script doesn't really put a lot into it, so why should I. The rest of the movie is fun to watch and the dialogue is actually pretty funny mostly. Leonard Nimoy plays a cameo, which gives some amount of life to the movie.

Here are the numbers.

Overall Ridiculousness: 7. Could have definitely been more ridiculous. For instance, there could have been midgets. No midgets in this film except possibly Chaka.

Violence: 3. No violence, really, except the dinosaur stalking Marshall, but that was just funny.

Tits and Ass: 0.0. None. Except for maybe some indirectly at the very end which I won't talk about because I don't want to completely ruin the movie (as if I could).

Random dialogue: 6.0. Funny enough to keep the movie along in between smoking your crack pipe to stay interested.

Completely random number: 4.

Overall 2.5.   Funny, bad effects, somewhat good dialogue, and Anna Friel in a wife beater and shorts. Meh. It' was altogether mediocre but I liked it about as much as I liked the original series, which, mind you, sucked.