Pre-Historically Crappy

10,000 BC Twists the Facts and Messes with History in Super Bland Fairy Tale
by Morgan P Salvo

 I will NEVER see another movie this guy directs. If you are under 12 this might be fun for you—for the rest of us? God save us from the meandering simplistic cheese that is this sort of crap.

From the director responsible for Independence Day and Day After Tomorrow comes a movie without “day” in the title. I didn’t care for Independence Day, Day After Tomorrow is one of the worst movies ever made and 10,000 BC is no exception. Also in Emmerich’s list of credits is Stargate – the first movie I ever walked out on.

I’m no historian but I’m pretty sure that tribal cave-like men hunting mastodons didn’t co-mingle with the Egyptians building the pyramids, as this movie wants us to believe.
They speak in English, but their phony “accents” are anywhere from Bulgarian to German to British to Pathetic. Unbelievably, it’s narrated by OMAR SAHARIF. I thought even he was faking an accent.

I’ve never heard of Steve Strait (D’Leh), Cliff Curtis (Tic-Tic) should be ashamed of himself (he was in Once We Were Warriors, fer crissakes) and what a waste of Camilla Bell (Evolet). She was kinda good in When a Stranger Calls, bringing teenage believability to her tormented babysitter role. In BC she gets to have blue eyes and two lines. The rest of the movie she spends getting whisked away by one evil guy after another ’til finally the MOST evil guy holds her captive. Thus begins the quest to save her. The movie is a Romeo/Juliet story from the hoaky beginning to the cornball end, complete with trial by hunting, the old fortune teller woman, the kindly spear-holder, the kindlier natives and other people they meet along the way. In fact everyone is pretty darn friendly except the slave traders (4-legged demons) and the ALMIGHTY (a shrouded long finger-nailed Egyptian creep).
The CGI attributes include mastodons, a ridiculous run-in with a bunch of Do-Do birds, and the cool saber-toothed tiger which I was hoping (from the previews) was going to be in it a lot, has only two short scenes. I guess all that CGI energy went to the talking lion in Narnia…
There is no blood in the fight scenes. Two notably horrible scenes had me in my disbelief mode. First, the “heroes” break into the jail housing the slaves to enlist the would-be warriors to help them fight the ALMIGHTY and his minions. Then the heroes leave the jail, only to return to help the slaves escape the next day. If it was so easy to come and go, why didn’t they all leave? The other scene was the blind, gibberish-spewing, all-wise seer that the prisoners hide from the guards underground, just to pull him out to rattle off nonsense, tell the future, then stick him back in the ground. Why the guards never find him, how he got there or survives is never explained. I guess he must live on their urine.
There’s plenty of guiding light mumbo-jumbo and signs from the gods to further stagnate the plot. This movie screams for Yul Bryner and Anthony Quinn to save it.
If I ever catch myself watching another one of Roland Emmerich’s movies by accident, I’m going the way of the gibberish-spewing blind guy—I’d rather be under ground drinking urine than suffering through anything this lame again.




10,000 BC
Starring: Steven Strait, Camilla Bell, Cliff Curtis.
Dir: Roland Emmerich
 One star: only for the woolly mammoths and sabre-toothed tiger.