Writer and director Roland Emmerich (working again with fellow writer and frequent collaborator Harald Kloser) doesn’t exactly make good movies. Financially successful (sometimes monstrously so), yes, but good? Well, “good” seems to be an adjective far outside the filmmaker’s quite substandard reach.

Steven Strait and his toothy friend in Warner Bros.' 10,000 B.C.

All you have to do is look at the guy’s resume to get what I mean. His best film (and I use the term “best” loosely) is still his cartoonishly derivative end-of-world space opera Independence Day. Other than that, the rest of his resume reads like a who’s-who of cinematic catastrophe, Stargate, The Patriot, Godzilla and The Day After Tomorrow all idiot savant examples of a man fully in control of his visually dynamic faculties and utterly at a loss as to what to do with his emotionally dramatic ones.

Now comes his deliriously asinine and silly prehistoric adventure 10,000 B.C., and if the darn thing weren’t so mind-numbingly offensive it could easily be looked at as the single most unintentionally hilarious misbegotten mess 2008 is probably going to offer. For a man who has made a living making profitable crap for the major Hollywood studios this just might be his worst opus yet, and if all the snickering I heard in the preview audience I saw it with is to be believed I get the feeling the paying public might finally feel like agreeing with me.

The basics are fairly straight forward. A remote mountain tribe is decimated by more advanced marauders looking for slaves to complete their pyramids. A conflicted young man, D'Leh (Steven Strait), takes it upon himself to rescue his people from their clutches, most notably the beautiful woman he loves, Evolet (Camilla Belle). Joining him on his quest is his long-lost father’s former best friend and confidant Tic'Tic (Cliff Curtis). Together, they will journey far from home, experience new majestic wonders, battle fearsome beasts and change the face of civilization forever.

In other words, it’s the English language version of Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto, only this time devoid of any thrills, decent acting, visceral charge or any other kinetically exhilarating trait which might make watching it even halfway worthwhile. More, the blatant racism is borderline astonishing, this tale of a White Man freeing a bunch of backwards Black Men from the clutches of distinctly Arab Slave Traders in turbans with the aid of an outstanding Maori Actor from New Zealand (who deserves much, much better) all so he can mate with a buxom blue-eyed White Woman so culturally and socially backwards it almost defies description.

A person can go into this comic book-style mish-mash ready and willing to forgive it for all its innumerable historical inaccuracies. They can live with the laughingly bad acting and video game level CGI effects. They can even go with the flow and understand the film is nothing more than a 1940’s inspired grade B monster movie throwback and not complain too much about the inane dialogue or dully cliché melodrama.

They can forgive a lot of things, but I’m not entirely sure they’re going to be able to forgive Emmerich for this. Maybe he’s making some sort of broadly satirical statement like the brilliant Paul Verhoeven did with his unjustly underrated sci-fi spectacle Starship Troopers, but based on the guy’s filmography I sure as heck don’t think so. This is just stupidly lazy storytelling, nothing more (and certainly nothing less), and I’d tell the director to be ashamed of himself but I’m pretty darn positive he didn’t even notice he did anything wrong. 

In all fairness, it must be pointed out there are some marvelously realized Wooly Mammoths on display, while a truly beautiful Saber-toothed Tiger pretty much stole my breath. But really, that’s about it, nothing else all that worthy of mention making 10,000 B.C. a massively ponderous adventure history will hopefully forget. 

Film Rating: ê  (out of 4)

Additional Links:

-  10,000 B.C. Theatrical Trailer