... where Will Ferrell is allowed to make
comedies
?
I mean, I got talked into seeing
Anchorman by a friend, and found it completely unamusing. (She insists that
Elf was very good, which is why she wanted to see
Anchorman. I haven't seen
Elf, so I can't say, but saying that it's better than
Anchorman seems like faint praise indeed.)
Later, I saw
Talledaga Nights and thought it just as unamusing as
Anchorman had been.
On the other hand, I quite liked his only (to my knowledge) "serious" movie,
Stranger than Fiction.
Anyway, I saw
Land of the Lost last night. Words cannot describe how awful an experience it was.
I wanted to see a movie last night, and since I'd already seen
Star Trek twice, I figured I might see
Up again. I got to the theater about 10 minutes before the film was supposed to start and saw that there was a very long line at the ticket counter. There were two of those "self-serve" ticket vending machines in the corner, however. A theater employee was working on one of them, so I got into line for the other. All was going well until it was the turn of the guy in front of me. He tried three times to buy a ticket, but failed each time. On his third attempt, I glanced over his shoulder and saw from the instructions on the screen that he was holding his credit card upside-down. Apparently, he couldn't understand what he was doing wrong, but he was seemingly determined to keep trying.
I was trying to think of a polite way to tell the guy ahead of me what his problem was when the guy working on the other machine evidently gave up. He turned to me, said, "There's another machine right over here, if you want to use it," and led me to it. When we arrived, its screen said "Out of Order" too. Oops. Nonetheless, the guy assured me that he'd have it fixed in a jiffy. I looked back at the now rather long line at the other machine and decided that I had no real choice but to wait.
Five minutes go by, while he assures me that he'll have it fixed "any minute now." Then ten minutes go by. Then fifteen minutes go by. Finally, he gives up and tells me that he'll go into the box office himself to get me a ticket. (I was thinking wistfully that "If I'd only stayed in the original line ...")
By this time, the movie I was
planning to see had started 15 minutes ago. Checking the display board, I saw that
Land of the Lost would be starting in a few minutes. "Well, how bad can it be?" I thought to myself.
I really should have just left and driven across town to Blockbusters.
I began to have a bad feeling about things when I got into the theater and realized that, except for a few forlorn-looking parents, I was apparently the only person in the theater over the age of 17.
The alleged "humor" of the movie can be divided into three categories, so far as I could tell.
Category 1: All three lead characters, but especially the two male characters, were
incredibly stupid. No, make that
unbelieveably stupid. I'd call them idiots, but that would be an insult to idiots.
Category 2: Bodily functions. Belching, flatulence, mucus, feces, urine -- you get the idea.
Category 3: Holly's boobs. Various characters grab her breasts and give 'em a good squeeze throughout the movie. When this isn't happening, she's leaning into the camera to give the audience a good view of her cleavage. (Whenever this happened, the adolescent males in the audience would make noises of general approval.)
Not only is there nothing
remotely amusing about the movie, the two male characters are
completely unlikeable. Marshall isn't just a world-class idiot, he's arrogant, short-tempered, and mean-spirited. If they were
trying to make him a completely unlikeable character, they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, in my estimation.
"Yeah, but maybe that's so that he can be redeemed in the end," you might be thinking. No. He's every bit as obnoxious in the end as he had been all along.
***Spoiler Alert***
How obnoxious and unlikeable was he? Well, near the end of the movie, he gets swallowed alive by a
Tyrannosaurus rex. (As a direct result of his own stupidity, I might add.) I actually found myself thinking, "
Please let him be dead!" -- even though I knew full well as the
Tyrannosaur stomped away with our "hero" in its belly that Marshall would inevitably be back. If figured that if he died as a result of his stupidity, incompetence and arrogance, the movie would at least have had
some redeeming value. Sadly, that wasn't to be the case.
Sure enough, we later learn that Marshall actually passed through the
Tyrannosaur's digestive tract alive and unharmed, and was
defecated out. Yes, just when you thought the movie couldn't
possibly get any stupider or more juvenile, it tops itself.
For the love of all that's holy,
don't waste your time and money on this piece of trash! Maybe the guys from MST3K could make it interesting, but otherwise ...
Cheers,
Michael
What kind of sick, cruel world do we live in ...
I think I enjoyed it.
Linear Mode
