March 16, 2008
Well, this was rather fun. It has had some awful reviews in the nationals, but for most people it’s going to beg comparison with the iconic 60s blockbuster 1,000,000 Years BC and the slightly less iconic (but still valuable) 80s Quest for Fire; and such a comparison will turn out to be instructive, as this is a movie that owes everything about itself to other movies. One Million (as we will call it) had a scorching Raquel Welch in her itsy bitsy teeny weeny little scrap-of-fur bikini; this movie had a rather attractive girl who had been compelled to wear bright blue contact lenses, as she was playing a character who went down in legend as The Girl With Blue Eyes (why didn’t they just cast someone who actually had blue eyes?) and as if to compound the artificiality, sported eyebrows of a perfectly shaped density and blackness unparalleled since Elizabeth Taylor circa 1960 (at least until Charlie from Busted circa 2003). The hero of this movie was pretty yummy, but if directors are aiming for verisimilitude they have to remember that twenty years of eating mammoths and not flossing is likely to give you teeth like George Washington’s and probably not the gleaming white beautifully parallel gnashers displayed in moments of high emotion by Steven Strait.
One Million had adorable wobbly stop-motion dinosaurs; this movie has rather nicely done CGI mammoths and a somewhat less believable but still very pleasant sabre-tooth tiger, which kindly agrees not to chow down on our hero after he has saved it from drowning in a flooded pit. The best thing about the movie for me was the chief of the marauding horseback mounted bad guys who come to abduct able-bodied tribespersons from far and wide to be set to work building pyramids. He captures the heroine and is so taken with her that he risks losing the respect of his men and the approval of his bosses in order to keep her for himself. He had a wonderful face – much too full of soul for a brutal slaver – alas, I couldn’t see his name in the credits, as it’s hard to identify characters who are only referred to by grunts in the screenplay. But he was really good.
Our hero pursues his abducted girl across mountain and desert to somewhere very like ancient Egypt, where suddenly our early mankind movie collides with Stargate. An immortal who may have come from beyond the stars and is supported by a powerful priesthood has enslaved entire societies and quite a lot of mammoths in order to build some extremely impressive pyramids. You can probably guess what happens next.
The pyramids and the mammoths were splendid. The plot was stuffed with implausibilities and, ultimately, one didn’t care that much about the characters, so that when they nicked a certain scene from The Mummy Returns I don’t think many people in the audience shed a tear. But for those with moppets who enjoy big impressive set pieces and hundreds of rampaging mammoths, it is tremendous fun. Smaller moppets who don’t like to watch cruelty to even CGI animals might well find it upsetting though.
One Million had adorable wobbly stop-motion dinosaurs; this movie has rather nicely done CGI mammoths and a somewhat less believable but still very pleasant sabre-tooth tiger, which kindly agrees not to chow down on our hero after he has saved it from drowning in a flooded pit. The best thing about the movie for me was the chief of the marauding horseback mounted bad guys who come to abduct able-bodied tribespersons from far and wide to be set to work building pyramids. He captures the heroine and is so taken with her that he risks losing the respect of his men and the approval of his bosses in order to keep her for himself. He had a wonderful face – much too full of soul for a brutal slaver – alas, I couldn’t see his name in the credits, as it’s hard to identify characters who are only referred to by grunts in the screenplay. But he was really good.
Our hero pursues his abducted girl across mountain and desert to somewhere very like ancient Egypt, where suddenly our early mankind movie collides with Stargate. An immortal who may have come from beyond the stars and is supported by a powerful priesthood has enslaved entire societies and quite a lot of mammoths in order to build some extremely impressive pyramids. You can probably guess what happens next.
The pyramids and the mammoths were splendid. The plot was stuffed with implausibilities and, ultimately, one didn’t care that much about the characters, so that when they nicked a certain scene from The Mummy Returns I don’t think many people in the audience shed a tear. But for those with moppets who enjoy big impressive set pieces and hundreds of rampaging mammoths, it is tremendous fun. Smaller moppets who don’t like to watch cruelty to even CGI animals might well find it upsetting though.