| Overall Grade: |
D |
|
| Story: |
D- |
|
|
| Acting: |
D- |
|
|
| Direction: |
D |
|
|
| Visuals: |
B |
|
|
2000BC: Princess Rescue from the Pharoah's Doom
by Michael Lee (movies profile)
Jul 14, 2008
223
of
265 people found this review helpful
The idea is cool, but there are so many flaws in this movie it borders on comical. If you don't read any further, the critical flaw in this movie about 10kBC is that it's not actually a 10kBC movie at all. This is a 2kBC Egyptian early-dynasty era rescue action adventure movie with a few scenes with 10kBC animals inexplicitly thrown in to justify a cool 5 digit title. Honestly, what probably happened here was the movie was already shot called "2000BC: Princess Rescue from the Pharoah's Doom", and they realized how badly it sucked so they changed the title, then threw in a few new scenes with a saber tooth tiger, some cut-n-paste wooley mammoths, and giant birds - poof! 10000BC, the audience will never know the difference. Except that unless you're 4 years old the discontinuity by about 8000 years is about as subtle as Michael Jackson suntanning at the beach. Honestly this movie would have been better if the writers had given the tribe a magical time warp orb.
Ok so thats the critial flaw. But wait, theres more. Let's list a few:
1) The tribe consists of different ethnicities; white, aboriginal, and black. Come on, in 10kBC races would be developing far from each other under extremely different conditionns. This just makes it seem like an elementary school play. And that the two heros are nice looking white kids right out of "the O.C." just insults every other race. This idea is just stupid and distracts from any authenticity.
2) Acting is horrible. It's forced and everyone is speaking in a shakespearian grunty fake caveman speak. It makes Jake Loyd's Anakin performance appear Oscar worthy. It really should not have been done in english, it should have been done in a native indian or european tribal language and subtitled. it would have at least added a shred of authenticity and believability.
The acting, english, and fake races make it just difficult to "get into" and feel as if you're watching a story set in 10kBC. But that's just the beginning:
3) Narration. The entire movie is narrated by what is probably the worst and most useless narration I've ever heard. The narrator sounds like Ghandi with a cold, which only adds yet another odd thing thrown into the authenticity mix. But that would be ok if the narration actually added anything to the movie. The narrator only continually states the obvious and just says exactly what they are doing on screen. Useless and annoying. Mute!
4) CG. The CG is actually fairly good, it's at least technically up to the standards of LOTR, but falls 10,000 years short of the artistry. The Wooley Mammoths look great one at a time, but look unimpressive when they are in herds. Basically when there are lots of any CG element in this movie, they look rubber stamped. The Mammoth herds look like the same mammoth cut-n-pasted a hundred times. Fortunately (or unfortunately) there aren't many CG animal scenes in this movie. The saber cat is pretty cool but it's movement isn't mapped perfectly to the physical set, so it's walking/jumping looks animated. But we only have a few scenes with the cool cat anyway.
5) Costume and makeup. As bad as everything was in this movie a saving grace could have been the costume/makeup. But instead the costumes look as if they were retreads from Planet of the Apes. And again, lots of discontinuity. The "old mother" costume is pretty cool, but the rest of the tribe look as if they bought "cave man" halloween costumes from Spencers. The makeup is ridiculous. In an attempt to make the tribe members appear authentic they all have mud wiped on them, but instead of looking fierce they look as if they are all getting a luxurious mud mask at the local spa. All the tribe have dreads which was a cool idea, except that they all look as if they are $200.00 fashion dread jobs done at a Paris hair salon. There were so many chances for someone to do something right here, and I couldn't spot a single success.
6) The ending. Ok. This was a bad movie through and through but at least it ended like a good old fashion spaghetti western should.... or did it. No they even ruined the cool Sergio Leone ending! Curses!
As bad as this movie was, it was actually tolerable to watch and I even let myself slightly get into the stupid "rescue the stolen girlfriend" story. Though it didn't appear that many people were enjoying this film too much, I didn't see anyone walk out. It was a waste of $20 bucks but I can think of worse ways to spend 2hrs. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
My Public Profile 
