Movie Preview: Land of the Lost

I was thinking about the upcoming movie Land of the Lost earlier today. I had been flipping channels and saw that Sci-Fi had a marathon of the episodes on. I watched a few, reminding me of my youth some time ago.

Now the thing is that the children’s television show used to appear in the 70’s on Saturday mornings. It’s campy, unrealistic, and done in stop animation – which looks bad compared to the effects of say Jurassic Park. That doesn’t even cover the bad make-up jobs on the Sleestac creatures that abound the show. But it was entertaining, and even moreso today.

Then I saw trailers for the Will Ferrell movie remake. The first thought I had was instantly ‘revisioning’. Those that follow my movie reviews know that this almost always means a crappy movie. When you add in the fact that this is a television show to movie conversion, well the odds of it being a crappy movie go up exponentially. Perhaps the only way you could be more sure this will be horrendous was if 2 or more rappers were in the film.



The trailers really don’t have any of the campy charm of the original show. From what I’ve seen it looks like it will be a running gag of how wrong, and stupid, Will Ferrell’s character can be. Add in a couple of bits of CGI, and there you go. To say I’m underwhelmed at this point is an understatement.

But this film will draw an audience. Not a big one by my bet, but it might just break-even. Which is a shame as that means Will Ferrell will likely continue on the path of mediocre films he has been doing for years now. He was funny in Elf. But by the time I saw Ricky Bobby, the joke was old. Now it’s as ancient as the dinosaurs are supposed to be.

Let me share a known secret about movies, specifically movie trailers. The editors of any film have one huge job when it comes to the movie trailers, which is to make the film look good. Any halfway decent editor can make the worst film look like a $100 million dollar blockbuster. They tend to grab the best 2 minutes of a film and cobble it together, so viewers will rush in expecting a far better film than they get 9 out of 10 times.

Look at some of the worst films you have ever seen, and check out the trailers of that film. In almost every case you will see a great (relative to the final product) movie trailer.

When I watch the trailer for Land of the Lost, I am immediately drawn to the fact that the writers almost definitely never saw the show. Not as kids or adults. I can also see that a huge chunk of the below the line costs of the film were spent on CGI animation. But what I don’t get are really funny jokes. Or any hint of a plotline beyond the one joke that is obvious (as stated above).

The film makes me think of the revisioning of Dukes of Hazzard and Lost in Space. Or perhaps Starsky & Hutch. Films that no sober person ever saw before, or even maybe after, they hit cable. And they hit cable fast, as the DVD sales sucked as well. They were bad films, remakes of far better television shows, and completely revisioned.

Of course Land of the Lost, and other shows of this ilk, are not targeting my dollars. They know that I remember the show. They know that I would see the trailer and think it was crap. Nope, they are targeting an audience of 25 and under. Because it’s all new to you. And since it’s new, the younger audience is not expecting better.

Hollywood has become a land of low expectations, and lower performances. Movie studios won’t spend the money on an original script – especially when they can revamp someone else’s idea. They slop together a half-thought out idea, and bang there is a movie. They will keep doing this too, until audiences stop paying to see this warmed up refuse.

I’m sure Will Ferrell got paid well for this film. Good for him, honestly. He didn’t have to work hard and got his money up front. I don’t blame him. But I will say that based on the trailer, the running joke, and the plot if you see this movie you will be wasting money.

Looking for a plot

Last night, while at my Monday 8-ball pool tournament, a discussion came up about movies. The differences between old classics and great films and modern films. This focused mostly on sci-fi films.

It all started with the horribly wrong movie Dragon Wars (please don’t see this, not on DVD or cable, its pitiful). It was part of a line up of ridiculous terrible sci-fi films from none other than the SyFy Channel on Sunday. Not that much more should be expected from that cable network.

But from there we discussed how movies these days, especially those in sci-fi, now rely on special effects as opposed to plot. This is most evident in the worst of sci-fi movies. Like the extremely low budget Raptor Island (starring Lorenzo Lamas – your first clue of how bad it was). It was a CGI rip off of Jurassic Park, with about 1/5th the budget and 1/10th the plot. Virtually every scene in the movie conflicted with some other part of the film. But there was plenty of bad CGI to try to keep you occupied.

Which is why it cannot compare to other films. In fact, those of us a bit older on the team, were recalling the first movies we ever saw. I had the original King Kong (1930’s), another teammate had Frankenstein, another was Nosferatu. Overall we could name several films from our formative years that we had seen and still remember. This was compared to our youngest teammate, who couldn’t recall any film older than Bladerunner, which he saw on television.

Because without a real plot, what is there to remember? Honestly, there is nothing to pay attention to. Movies these days are so dependant on CGI and explosions (which can be great things) that the concept of a plot goes out the window. Thus the increasing number of movies ripping off or revisioning older plot-driven movies. And each has almost completely been a failure.

Hell, even the remakes of slasher horror films have been complete let-downs. The budgets for films like Friday the 13th were exponentially larger than the original film, and the result was deplorable. Because acting, and plots, are substantially reduced in the new versions as opposed to the old – even in movies where little plot was involved.

Or the trend to have movies steal multiple ideas from successful movies, cobbled together in the hopes of making a passable movie. Like the latest John Cena movie, 12 Rounds. The pitch had to be something like ‘Take Cena, who is popular in wrestling, put him in a Die Hard situation with a bit of Speed and Terminator thrown in, and we have a great movie.’ Except movie-goers had the option of DVD’s and Tivo, both of which are superior to such efforts.

Why are there so few films that are compelling these days? Ultimately that was the question being asked last night. Simply because there is no plot in films anymore. And without that you have nothing more than a string of explosions and CGI graphics strung together in a hodge-podge that even a cartoon can do better.

[Oh, for those wondering. My 8-ball and 9-ball teams are leading our league, likely to win both with room to spare. My match last night took 15 minutes total; 4 games with each game taking one turn of me and my opponent. Essentially I ran to one ball or the 8 and then he ran the table and it was time to rack in each game. Talk about 2 players being on fire.]

The odd and dumb before the holiday - 12.21.2006.2

Usually I have found that the odd and bizarre tends to appear throughout the weekend, but last weekend there really wasn’t anything. Now this week seems to be making up for that and may well take care of the holiday weekend as well. The odd and dumb are in abundance, so much so that I’m not sure where I will start.

Well perhaps the news that a Komodo dragon is capable of virgin births. Yes it’s true; the big lizards can reproduce without any help from a mate. Nature is just way smarter than us, as scientist had no clue this was possible. But like it was said in Jurassic Park Nature always finds a way. I doubt this spontaneous birthing is as big a deal for Komodo dragons though, and I’d imagine a whole lot less fun.

With the pleasant news done, Miss USA is up. The thing I don’t understand is how this took up so much time. Coverage by news stations was enormous. Almost as much time was given to whether this girl would lose her title as was given to cover several forest fires. Seriously, this was a full day of news with coverage of Mr. Donald Trump giving the girl a second chance. Now compare that to how much attention is being to the letter by Rep. Goode about Muslims. If that’s not odd and sad I’m not sure what is.

For the record, Mr. Trump should have removed her. All this has proven is that if you can bat your eyes enough and cry well you can get away with anything. That is if you are a pretty girl. Not drop dead gorgeous just pretty and young. Try that in the real world and see what happens. It’s not like she did anything to deserve a second chance. All she had to do was show up at events and look pretty, maybe say a couple of words. Tough job.

Millions of women (maybe not that many) move to the city every year. Many are form smaller, well all of them are from smaller cities now that I think about it and they don’t go berserk drinking and allegedly doing drugs and missing work. At least they don’t if they expect to keep their places and have food to eat. She made the choices; she should have reaped the consequences.

Before I mentioned that the attention given Miss USA was sad and what could be worse. I thought about it. The ongoing name calling by Ms. Rosie O’Donnell and Mr. Trump is worse. It deserves even less time that the Miss USA slap on the wrist that sparked it. This is simple, Ms. O’Donnell is wrong. She attacked Mr. Trump on a personal level. She questioned his morality (which was never an issue nor involved in what he was doing) and fidelity (also totally off subject). There was no call for it.

Mr. Trump responded more harshly than needed. But I can understand. She made a personal attack and it hit him. I wouldn’t stand for something like that myself, if I were a celebrity or entertainer. And of course she had to respond. Do we really need hourly reports on this? Is this so important that it all couldn’t be summed up during the evening news?

I’ll say it again, where is the coverage of important items? If the news about a politician essentially claiming that only certain religions should be allowed in the nation, and that only European immigrants should be allowed in this nation, is too real or serious perhaps something else could be covered in this time. There’s always the news that Mr. Stephen Colbert ‘won’ the guitar solo greenscreen battle against the Decemberists. Of course he got a bit of help from Mr. Peter Frampton, but I feel the truthiness of it was all the vindication Mr. Colbert needed. And there would be enough time left over to mull the impact of a tell-all book on Oprah, like it really matters. Or maybe another chance to view the basketball fight and mention the pitiful ‘penalty’ issued to the irresponsible NBA players. Or is that too serious again?

This is what I think, what do you think?