Land of the Lost (film)
Land of the Lost is a 2009 American science fiction adventure comedy film directed by Brad Silberling, written by Chris Henchy and Dennis McNicholas and starring Will Ferrell, Danny McBride, Anna Friel and Jorma Taccone, loosely based on the 1974 Sid and Marty Krofft television series of the same name. The film was theatrically released on June 5, 2009 by Universal Pictures.
Land of the Lost
- Chris Henchy
- Dennis McNicholas
Land of the Lost
by Sid & Marty Krofft, Allan Foshko and David Gerrold
- Sid & Marty Krofft
- Jimmy Miller
- June 5, 2009
102 minutes[1]
United States
English
$100 million[2]
$68.8 million[3]
The film received generally negative reviews from critics, although some praised Friel's performance. The film was a commercial failure, grossing just $68.8 million against its $100 million budget. It received seven Golden Raspberry Award nominations, including Worst Picture, winning Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip-off or Sequel.
Plot[edit]
The enthusiastic founder of "quantum paleontology", Dr. Rick Marshall has a low-level job at the La Brea Tar Pits, three years after a disastrous interview with Matt Lauer on Today went viral and ruined his career. Doctoral candidate from Cambridge Holly Cantrell tells him that his controversial theories combining time warps and paleontology inspired her.
She shows him a fossil with an imprint of a cigarette lighter that he recognizes as his own, along with a crystal made into a necklace that gives off strong tachyon energy. She convinces him to finish his tachyon amplifier and go on an expedition to the Devil's Canyon Mystery Cave theme park where she found the fossil.
As they float into the cave on a small inflatable raft with the theme park's owner Will Stanton in the role of a paddler and narrator, Marshall detects high levels of tachyons. Activating the tachyon amplifier creates an earth-shaking time warp the raft falls into. Having regained their senses in a sandy desert interspersed with items from many eras and discovered that the amplifier is nowhere to be seen, the three travellers rescue an apeman by the name of Chaka, who becomes their friend and guide.
They spend the night in a cave where they have taken refuge from the pursuing telepathically endowed tyrannosaur they nickname "Grumpy", who develops a grudge against Marshall for being intellectually disparaged. In the morning, Marshall receives a telepathic invocation for help and is being drawn to run towards ancient ruins, where they encounter reptiloids called the Sleestak before meeting Enik the Altrusian, who sent the message. Exiled by the Zarn, who wants to take over Earth with his Sleestak minions, Enik can prevent the invasion if Marshall gets the tachyon amplifier.
Led by Chaka, the group enters a rocky wasteland littered with artefacts from different epochs, encountering compsognathuses, dromaeosaurs, Grumpy, and a female allosaur nicknamed "Big Alice". These last two are battling it out over the remains of an ice-cream seller killed by the dromaeosaurs, until they sense Marshall and chase him. Marshall kills Big Alice with liquid nitrogen, finding the amplifier was swallowed by the allosaur. But a pteranodon snatches the amplifier into its caldera incubator. Treading lightly on the thin volcanic-glass floor of the glowing caldera, Marshall gives himself over to the music of A Chorus Line coming from the tachyon amplifier, and dancingly meanders between the pterosaur eggs towards the device. When he reaches it, the playback suddenly stops. The eggs begin to hatch, and they realize the music was keeping the baby pterosaurs asleep. Marshall, Will and Holly belt out "I Hope I Get It", with Chaka joining in to display a great singing voice, much to everyone's surprise.
While Marshall, Will and Chaka go on a psychedelic spree, Holly is walking about with the tachyon amplifier, which detects a signal coming from an underground cavity, where she picks up a dinosaurian egg and learns from a holographic recording left by the long-deceased Zarn that Enik the Altrusian is an escaped convict who, having overtaken the central pylon and its tachyonic crystals, is planning to go on a rampage across time and space. The recording ends with the Zarn being killed by Enik. Deemed to be guilty of providing assistance to Enik, she is captured by Sleestak and brought to the Library of Skulls for a summary execution. Having sent Chaka to bring Enik, Marshall and Will rescue Holly by pushing the Sleestak executioners into a well with red-hot magma at its bottom. Enik arrives with a tachyonic crystal, whose power allows him to establish telepathic control over the remaining Sleestak, one of whom is carrying the tachyon amplifier. The villain leaves to open a wormhole between the prehistoric Land of the Lost and the modern Earth, which is the first habitable planet to be pervaded by his army of rapidly reproducing Sleestak reptiloids.
At that point, Grumpy appears to settle the old score with Marshall, who pole-vaults into Grumpy's maw and, by dislodging an intestinal obstruction, earns the beast's gratitude. Riding atop the tyrannosaur, he joins the others to defeat the Sleestak army and confront Enik. After one of the crystals sustaining the wormhole is shattered, Enik reveals the portal will close forever. Marshall grabs Holly's crystal and inserts it into the vacant socket, but it becomes apparent that the substitute crystal will not hold for long. Enik catches Will by an ankle to prevent Marshall's departure. With the help of Chaka, Will restrains Enik and chooses to stay. Marshall and Holly leap into the portal, whereas Will is later welcomed by a bevy of cheerful and attractive girls of Chaka's tribe.
A triumphant Marshall reappears on Today with the dinosaurian egg Holly brought back, promoting his new book, Matt Lauer Can Suck It! Left behind on the Today set, the egg hatches a baby Sleestak, which hisses as the screen goes black.
The names of characters are given exactly as in the credits at the end of the film.
Differences from original series[edit]
The film is a campy parody of the original TV series about the adventures of a father and his two children. While the first names remain the same, the film converts the Holly character into an unrelated research assistant to allow for more risqué humor because she is the main character's love interest.[9] Will, instead of being a son, is a theme park owner.[10] Rick Marshall is a paleontologist in the film, not a park ranger as in the original series. Instead of the puppet stop-motion technique used in the original series, the film's creators relied on computer-generated imagery.[11] While the original Saturday morning show targeted a child audience, the film was intended for an adult audience and includes profanity, sex, drug references, and other adult-oriented material.[12]
The actors who played Holly and Will in the original TV series, Kathy Coleman and Wesley Eure, filmed cameos for the film.[13] However, the final version of the film does not include these scenes.[13]
Reception[edit]
Box office[edit]
On its opening day of June 5, the film was a box office flop by grossing only $7.9 million. The film performed under expectations in its first weekend in theaters, its $19 million opening was far less than the expected $30 million. The film's box office results fell far behind that of the 2009 comedy The Hangover, which opened during the same weekend.[15][16] The film's opening weekend gross was about two-thirds what Universal reportedly expected to earn.[17] It made $69 million worldwide.[14] In 2014, the Los Angeles Times listed the film as one of the most expensive box office flops of all time.[18]