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 My
adoration of all things Sid and Marty Krofft is a deep and abiding
thing. These kings of Saturday morning television provided me with a
psychedelic view of life that was only limited by the chronically low
budgets of their shows. Their world gave me witches, wizards, sea
monsters, talking hats, magic flutes, singing dragons and their use of
snappy tunes and clever production design turned cheesy sets into
fantastic wonderlands. The charm of the old Sid and Marty Krofft shows
seems to be an either-you-get-it-or-you-don’t proposition. This holds
true for the modern remake of one of their most popular series, Land of
the Lost.
Scientist Dr. Rick Marshall is a man with a dream, a dream of time
warps. Oh, they’re out there, and as shown in a rambunctious interview
with Matt Lauer on the Today show, he’s willing to fight to defend his
vision. Utterly discredited by that YouTube-worthy fracas, Marshall is
found three years later teaching his theories to a bunch of bored grade
schoolers. Enter Holly Cantrell, late of Cambridge University, who,
despite the world’s derision, believes Dr. Marshall’s ideas had merit
and convinces the good doctor to accompany her on a casual expedition.
Apparently, the conditions for their experiment to work best under a
dilapidated amusement park ride run by a local yahoo, Will Stanton.
Will gamely guides the pair through a Pirates of the Caribbean-style
flume ride in a rubber raft, complete with rubber “lizard men” falling
from wires overhead, when Marshall’s Tachyon Meter generates a blast of
energy that turns the silly amusement into a rushing flood. The trio is
suddenly hurled over a waterfall and they wake in a desert littered with
broken relics of Viking ships, Cessna planes and other souvenirs from
distant times, past and future. Marshall and Holly are thrilled the
experiment works, but the three aren’t so pleased to realise they are
being pursued by creatures from a distant age with very sharp teeth and
with the Tachyon Meter missing, there’s no way of getting home. One of
those creatures, a diminutive, fuzzy Neanderthal named Chaka becomes
their guide around the strange land and they manage to barely stay a
step ahead of a tyrannosaurus rex with a vendetta against Marshall and a
tribe of real lizard men plotting to take over the trio’s dimension of
Earth.
Even
if you don’t know the first thing about the original Land of the Lost,
this is worth seeing just to watch Will Ferrell riotously riffing off
fellow funny man Danny McBride for 90 minutes. Rick Marshall isn’t a
stretch for Ferrell, but the comedian’s knack for playing dimwitted,
pompous buffoons that can’t put a foot right, does nicely here.
Marshall, for all his genius, is an idiot and his presumptions that his
PhD, will get the crew through situations they could never have dreamed
of are flattened time and again. McBride’s whipsmart timing provides a
perfect foil for Ferrell as Will is often the one behind the needle to
Marshall’s inflated ego. I don’t want to think about how many hours
Jorma Taccone spent hunched over in a furry suit and bad prosthetic
teeth as the Paku prince, Chaka. In keeping with the entire
production, this version of Chaka has a much sillier, adult edge as we
see from Chaka’s first meeting with the nubile Holly. As the straight
man of the piece, Anna Friel does get to do much other than be bright
and perky and smarter than the men of the cast, which isn’t hard. She
does do a nice update of the original Holly outfit of the plaid shirt
and brick red trousers that never changed for the two years Land of the
Lost ran on television, though it does get altered for a more Lara Croft
look early on.
While
Land of the Lost could be considered a very loose adaptation, what will
be great for fans of the show is how faithfully they’ve kept in the
memorable bits; there’s Grumpy the T- rex, who’s scarier looking than
his now-ancient Jurassic Park ancestor. He’s fast and agile and his
battle of wits against Rick Marshall is a hoot: Apparently, the old
theory about dinosaurs having a brain the size of a walnut takes a very
different perspective in Grumpy’s world. Of course, there were the
critters I was most interested to see; those big, lumbering green
lizards with pointed heads and huge globular eyes that haunted my
childhood, the Sleestaks. They look fantastic. Director Brad
Silberling doesn’t speed them up, but instead adds plenty of them to
form a slow, scary, green army. They have been updated by a double row
of pointy teeth and now you can’t see the zippers on their suits. The
Sleestak Village looks perfect and the Pylons and mysterious crystals
are all accounted for. Good stuff. Also from the old show, the
intelligent Sleestak, Enik is here along with another smart lizard
voiced by a well-known star from The Final Frontier. The special
effects are shockingly good and it’s ironic how much money has been
spent on making the best of this feature version of a show known for its
cheesy, DIY trappings. While this is meant to be a total comedy, the
affection for the original show in all its quaint, low-budget melodrama
is evident in every scene. As for how adult that comedy is; I don’t
know what young ones are going to make of a hallucinogenic bacchanal
that ends with a bout of homoerotic spooning for Marshall, Will and
Chaka. The neat dinosaur chase scenes and the group’s interactions with
other prehistoric creatures will keep the kids amused; including an
early-era mosquito that makes a tasty treat of Marshall while he
serenades the team to the tune of the Land of the Lost theme song.
Land
of the Lost makes a wise decision to never take the easy route and poke
fun at the flaws of its source material; instead it takes the best parts
of the beloved series and puts a hilariously off-the-wall spin on it.
Will this movie be viewed favourably by people who never saw or
appreciated the show? Not likely, and that’s part of what makes Land of
the Lost so much fun and even a little subversive; at no point are the
filmmakers ever worried about straying from its campy origins, which
makes it all the more audacious.
~ The
Lady Miz Diva
June 2nd,
2009
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