“Marshall, Will, and Holly on a routine expedition
Met the greatest earthquake ever known.
High on the rapids it struck their tiny raft,
And plunged them down a thousand feet below.
To the Land of the Lost.”
This was the opening theme song that started the greatest adventure anyone ever saw on TV in 1974. “Land of the Lost” was a TV series that aired for three years on NBC and was produced by Sid & Marty Krofft Television Productions. This show was a monument for the 70′s as the affects used then, compared to today’s CGI affects, were ahead of its time. This show featured live action actors, stop motion/animation dinosaurs, strange sets, futuristic Alien-Lizard creatures, and cave men that hadn’t evolved. The actors were placed in front of a green screen and had to act as if they were really in danger and not in a sound stage. To quote today’s youth, that stuff was whack! Sid and Mary Kroft were able to do things with “Land of the Lost” that wouldn’t be seen again for three years till a plad clad George Lucas would revolutionize the green screen method with a little move called ”Star Wars.”
As a child of the 70′s I was a fan of the show. I even logged some time with the Sci-Fi channel during this past Memorial Day weekend when they ran their all day “Land of the Lost” marathon. I laughed at the affects but took notice that the stories and plots were ahead of the time.
Park Ranger Rick Marhsall and his two children Will and Holly went rafting. The next thing they know, they are in a world of new and strange adventures and have to find a way home. Each week showed the Marshalls trying to survive in this strange land, not get eaten by the T-Rex they called Grumpy, captured by the strange Alien-Lizard creatures known as Sleestaks, and find their way home. Eventually Rick Marshall finds his way home, but the kids are left behind for Season Three where their Uncle Jack shows up and helps them try to get back home. I guess dear old dad had to get back to Yellowstone Park and stop Yogi Bear from taking those pic-a-nic baskets (younger readers are scratching your head…older readers are laughing right now).
Here we are 35 years latter and fan favorite Will Ferrell stars in this modernization of a childhood classic. BUT with Will Ferrell you know that the story will be pushed back for the gross out comedy and I can say that he delivers highly on the gross out comedy. There is a reason “Land of the Lost” got a PG-13 rating and to be honest it could have gotten an R-rating with one or two jokes going into different directions. I’ll come out and say it right now, I am not a big Will Ferrell fan. Out of all the movies he’s been in, I’ve only like “Elf” and that was due more to Bob Newheart and James Caan then him. He was also good as Federal Wildlife Marshal Willenholly in Kevin Smith’s “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back” but again, that is due to Kevin Smith’s writing. With that being said and out in the open, I didn’t go into this movie expecting a lot along acting, plot, or non-gross-out jokes.
The plot of the 2009 “Land of the Lost” loosely follows the plot of the 1974 TV series. This time Rick Marshall (played by Will Ferrell) is a Doctor in Quantum Paleontologists and has a theory that with the right combination of sound waves you can travel to a parallel universe and see things that are much different then what we see here on Earth. He is laughed out of his profession and eventually is a down-on-his-luck guy set in his lazy ways working at the Tar Pits tourist park. It is here that we meet Holly Cantrell (played by Anna Friel) who believes in Dr Marshall’s theories and wants him to continue with his work. Holly found a fossil that was million of years old and had an imprint of a modern day lighter and needs Dr Marshall’s help to figure out how this happened. Reluctantly agreeing, Dr Marshall goes with Holly to the location of the fossil, a run down tourist shack in California’s dessert that is run by Will Stanton (Danny McBride). It is here that Rick Marshall, Will and Holly start their adventure that takes them to the land of the lost. Its funny, as I’m typing out the plot I’m realizing that this would be a great movie if done like “Time Line” meets “Jurrasic Park.” Instead, Will Ferrel and the writing due of Chris Henchy and Dennis McNicholas take the campyness of the original TV series and push it to Eleven.
The main comedy of the movie is how Dr Rick Marshall is a goof but doesn’t see that himself. There are many times where the cringe factor happened as the comedy was very slapstick and pushed the bar from funny to vulgar. Countless times the lose plot was used not to move the story along but to setup the next bit of slapstick comedy. Look, I won’t lie and say that I hated this move to the point of telling you not to see it. I laughed at about half of the jokes and humor. But I will say that I cringed on a lot of the jokes that just pushed the bar to that extra height and again wondered why people like Will Ferrell and his slapstick comedy. The CGI effects used in the movie still had the cartoony/stop action look of the original dinosaurs from the 1974 series. There are some nods and winks to the TV series but this movie manages to be its own entity that just happens to share in the name and basic plot. Overall if you go into this movie expecting a plot or anything that closely resembles the TV Series you’ll be fairly disappointed.
It is a shame that Sid and Marty Kroft Productions didn’t hold out and try to have a movie made following the mold of the original series. Think about how we could have had a new series of modern B-Movie adventures starting with “Land of the Lost” and then the sequals: “Return to the Land of the Lost” and ”Beneath the Land of the Lost.”
Rating: 
