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Land
of the Lost
The tune was ridiculously infectious. Marshall,
Will and Holly… An entire premise summed up in a few
lines with a hint of banjo…on a routine expedition…
So maybe it wasn't the greatest adventure ever known, but
the most straightforward adventure series from Sid & Marty
Krofft, Land of the Lost, must have done something
right to stick in the memories of kids in the '70s.
It wasn't just the theme song. It was that
golden combination of monkey men, lizard men and, of course,
thunder lizards, all variously threatening or befriending
the Marshall family trapped in an otherworldly jungle. While
it wouldn't have occurred to me that the only thing missing
from that combination was Will Ferrell's patented know-it-all
know-nothing, it doesn't hurt.
In this update, directed by Brad Silberling,
the family dynamic has been thrown away. That doesn't hurt
as much as you might think. Instead, the script by Chris
Henchy and Dennis McNicholas takes a more adult approach,
crafting as solid a sci-fi adventure as one could from a
Saturday morning television show. (Yes, despite fond memories,
I admit that part of its coolness came from us being six
at the time.)
As a plot, Land of the Lost works
fairly well. Discredited scientist Rick Marshall (Ferrell)
has been reduced to lecturing to children at the La Brea
Tar Pits. Resigned to failure after his theories of tapping
into time-traveling tachyons to solve the energy crisis
made him into the wrong kind of YouTube sensation, Marshall
has a hard time believing that Australian grad student Holly
Cantrell (Anna Friel) actually hero-worships him.
Her interference doesn't so much shake
the cobwebs off as make him just a little bit curious, so
the two set off to prove his theories at Devil's Canyon
Cave. Accompanied by tourist trap owner Will Stanton (Danny
McBride), they get sucked into a time vortex and all hell
breaks loose.
Maybe we don't need so much explanation
beyond that "…routine expedition," but it works. Throughout,
the movie offers crumbs of something much darker, especially
as the Marshall group finds the remains of those that have
gone before.
But with Ferrell, McBride and Lonely Island's
Jorma Taccone as monkey prince Chaka, there's no way that
this could be dark. Silberling lets them run rampant across
the script, with a lot of adjustments made for Ferrell and
McBride's personas, making a sometimes awkward combination.
Instead of being tense and driven by shame,
Rick Marshall might as well be Ron Burgundy, bumbling his
way into successes as well as failures. Nobody plays that
eerie and undeserved self-confidence as well as Ferrell,
and that keeps the movie from veering into too many dark
places. That's not necessarily a bad thing, since Land
of the Lost was a children's show.
For those remembering the show, however,
this movie isn't really for children. Will mutters a stream
of innuendoes, and Chaka spends an inordinate amount of
time finding excuses to feel up Holly. And though the movie
has moments of devolving into outright silliness (gags which
shouldn't work but dangit, they do and I won't spoil them),
the modern Sleestaks may just be too intensely scary - at
least at first - for kids.
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Silberling does try to strike a balance
with the old memories. One of the hallmarks of the series
was how cheesy everything looked, and despite having a lot
of CG at their disposal, the filmmakers don't work too hard
at making it seem realistic. Grumpy the Tyrannosaurus Rex
needs to be slightly more cartoony to make the plot work,
and ultimately the horror of the Sleestak race gets undercut
by the intelligent Enik (John Boylan) having an over-animated
mouth. These choices seem purposeful, a nod to how the effects
didn't quite match up with the actors in the original series.
Honestly, Land of the Lost doesn't
offer up many surprises, but it's solid. If you're not into
Ferrell, this movie isn't going to change your mind, and
maybe that's a shame. The premise was strong enough that
Silberling might have pushed the comic actor into striking
a different tone. But it is what it is, and it's funny,
without ruining the elements of the original series.
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