It was opening weekend for Land of the Lost.  The comedy, as you surely know by now, stars Will Ferrell as a scientist who winds up back in time being chased by dinosaurs.
It is, of course, a remake of a 1974 Saturday morning NBC show of the same name.  With a major exception:  the kids version from thirty-five years ago wasn’t a comedy.  At least not intentionally.
Back then, it was serious business.  A father and his two kids somehow were trapped in prehistoric times after being trapped in some mysterious time vortex that resulted from “the greatest earthquake ever known.”
Those stop-motion dinosaurs and cheesy chroma-key backgrounds that look so unbelievably fake now were magically real when we first saw it on TV.  It wasn’t a comedy.  It wasn’t silly.  There were corny family moments, but the drama of a family running for their lives and the suspense of the chase between the Tyrannosaurus Rex and the evil Sleestak were enough to keep the kiddies glued ot the set for a full half-hour.  Commercials included.
Sid and Marty Kroft, the producers of Land of the Lost, made a TV remake in the early 1990s.  The effects were updated.  Things looked infinitely more realistic than they did way back in the original production.
And it sucked.
There was just something to be said about cheesy special effects in a Saturday morning kids show that took itself so seriously.
Ferrell said he loved Land of the Lost as a kid, and because he loved it, he decided he wanted to turn it upside down, making it one of his trademark silly comedies.
Ferrell doesn’t do it for me.  He reminds me a lot of Jim Carrey.  There are funny things he does.  But there’s so much silliness that you have to sift through in between genuinely funny parts that I find myself quickly becoming bored with what I see.
Apparently, though, I find that Ferrell’s take on the classic wasn’t lost only on me: it appears to be struggling at the box office, possibly a result of movie reviews and buzz that it’s just not that funny after all.
I’d much rather watch DVDs of the original run.  Maybe movie-goers feel the same way.
Did you see it?  Any plans to?
I saw it. I wasn’t planning to, but a friend wanted to go. It was better than I thought in that I did laugh sometimes and I didn’t hate the movie and I found the visual aspects of the Land of the Lost to be interesting. Most of the jokes were gross jokes or sexual innuendo (or obvious). I get tired of sexual humor, especially in movies I think kids will want to see like this one. But I wouldn’t want kids seeing this one, really.
The movies I’ve liked most that I’ve seen since 2009 started were Star Trek and State of Play. I also liked Gran Torino but it is heavy and I don’t need to see it more than once.