Land of the Lost

Review by Jason Gaston

 

Land of the Lost, based on what is probably the worst excuse for a Saturday Morning kids show in the history of all television, could very well be the worst big-budget blockbuster since Catwoman.  This movie is all kinds of terrible and watching it is probably one of the torture techniques outlined in a classified Cheney memo.

The movie has a bare-bones plot very loosely based on that before-mentioned terrible kids show as disgraced scientist, Doctor Marshall (Will Ferrell); Holly (Anna Friel), a fellow scientist and admirer of his work; and Will (Danny McBride), a down on his luck tourist trap proprietor,  find themselves sucked through a vortex  landing in a strange new world that exists outside of space and time where dinosaurs run amok among Sleestak and monkey people.   Earning the trust of Cha-ka (Jorma Taccone), one of those monkey people, the group must find a piece of equipment that belts out sho-tunes (I'm not kidding) that will get them home and stop some sort of strange alien invasion that I really wasn't paying attention to.

By the twin suns of Tatooine, This movie is horrible!  It's 90 minutes of the most bizarre and most unfunny  excuse for a blockbuster I have ever seen.  The mere fact that this movie was greenlit, shot, and then edited and no one in the entire process realized what a terrible piece of cinematic poo they were assembling is a level of bumbling so massive that it's practically biblical in scale.

Will Ferrell has gone from mildly entertaining to downright repulsive and this movie can only further the theory that his career is not only going down in flames, but is also about to crash into a sewage reclamation facility.  I cannot imagine anyone currently employed in Hollywood turning in a more terrible and awkward performance.  Land of the Lost almost made me feel sorry for Will Ferrell - sorry that he has become surrounded by people who will not tell him that he isn't being funny.  As a performer, that has got to be a handicap.

About the only thing in this movie that wasn't a complete disaster was the casting of Danny McBride and Jorma Taccone as Will and Cha-ka.  These two were really the only two in the entire movie who ever scored any laughter and saved it from being complete bottom of the barrel dreck.   Instead, the movie is only the top level of that nasty oily sediment that collects at the bottom of the barrel.

Land of the Lost is just strange.  I can't figure out what the big joke is.  The series was awful in of itself, but at least it was something kids could enjoy.  The movie is full of swearing, inappropriateness, gross-out gags, bodily fluids, and everything that would make a parent not want to bring their kids to it.  If a movie as juvenile as Land of the Lost isn't interested in appealing to kids, exactly whom are they appealing to?

They don't seem to know and neither does the audience.  This is the first time I have ever actually witnessed someone try and get a refund after the movie was over.  It was spectacular.

Land of the Lost is nonsensical garbage running headfirst as fast as it can to nowhere.  It has destroyed any vestigial respect I still had for Will Ferrell as a comedian and I can pretty much guarantee that this breathtaking monument of failure will be high on my list of the worst movies of 2009.

If only this movie would have stayed lost, the world would be a better place.