Reviewed by Brett Weinstock

For me, Roland Emmerich movies have both amazing and severely disappointing.  His first real blockbuster was the 1996 hit, “Independence Day” starring of course Will Smith.  This movie still ranks as one of my all-time favorites.  His next film was the 1998 monster movie remake “Godzilla.”  This movie on the other hand, is not one of my all-time favs.  Since then, his mainstream movies have been basically hit-or-miss.  “The Patriot” was just downright awesome, and helped launch the career of the late Heath Ledger.  On the other hand, “The Day After Tomorrow” was a severe letdown for many, as it failed to deliver the end-of-the-world insanity that the trailers had alluded to.  Either way, I’m sure you are tired of hearing me rant about Emmerich’s previous work, so I’ll go ahead and jump into the review of his latest film: “10,000 BC.”

If you couldn’t tell by the title, this film is about prehistoric times.  In the film, D’Leh, a mammoth hunter, journey’s through unknown territory to secure the fate of his tribe, but more importantly, to rescue his true love.  From the onset of the film, it is obvious that D’Leh is not really respected amongst his people.  First, he is the son of the previous leader of the tribe, who chose to abandon them in a time of need.  On top of that, he has never really done anything to escape his father’s shadow and truly earn the trust of his people.  This all changes one day, when D’Leh accidentally slays an attacking mammoth, and is instantly catapulted into a wealth of admiration and respect.  Not knowing how to reject this instant “stardom”, he accepts the tribes request to become their leader.

Shortly after accepting the constant embracement of his tribesmen, a group of horse-riding warriors invade the tribe’s camp, and kidnap many people, including his one true love.  Here is where D’Leh is faced with his destiny- does he follow the path laid by his father, and abandon his people when they need him the most?  Or does rise up, and take charge against their foreign enemy?  Since we are dealing with Hollywood, the latter is the obvious course of action, and that’s where the ball started rolling- however unsuccessful it may have been.

After being kidnapped, Evolet (D’Leh’s love interest, played by the beautiful Camille Belle) is deemed as god-like or heaven-sent by the evil warriors, and she is sent to be sacrificed.  Naturally, D’Leh leads his band of tribesman to the end of the world in the quest to rescue his true love and recover what was once lost- his family’s pride.  In actuality, I enjoyed the film a lot more than I expected.  After seeing such negative reviews, I wasn’t too amped to watch this picture.  To me, this movie could be described as “The 13^th Warrior” meets “Apocolypto”, but in a more family-friendly version.

For some strange reason, this movie didn’t bother me as much as others have in the past year.  Yes, there was some terrible dialogue (D’Leh speaks to a saber-tooth tiger before freeing him) and some silly use of contact lenses (Evolet has ocean blue eyes), but it was a somewhat enjoyable action film.  Though Emmerich has definitely done better, I feel that he has also done much worse.  I can’t wholeheartedly recommend this movie for several reasons (those listed above, overall casting, feature length, etc), but I can say that you time would be more wasted on other movies.

Don’t get me wrong- this is NOT a good movie.  But it’s not necessarily a terrible film either.  There were many chances for brilliance in this movie, but Emmerich dropped the ball on quite a few of them.  There is an awesome scene about half-way through where some evil ostrich looking creatures attack the tribe in the jungle…the only problem is that this may be the only truly memorable experience in the entire movie.  Besides that ten minute section, the only thing many viewers will remember is the horrendous contact lenses- either way, you won’t really shut off the movie and be upset that you watched it. You will probably just forget about, which isn’t necessarily the best response.  But hey, trust me- it could be much, much worse.