Land of the Lost is a 2009 adventure/science fiction/comedy film directed by Brad Silberling, starring Will Ferrell, very loosely based on the 1974 Sid and Marty Krofft television series of the same name.
Plot[]
Three years before the start of the story, Paleontologist Rick Marshall has a disastrous interview with Matt Lauer of Today with both men getting into a vicious argument after he was dismissed as a crackpot and that his theories on time warps are considered nonsense. When the interview became a viral video, it ruined Marshall's career, landing him a dead end job at Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History. In the present, Doctoral candidate student Holly Cantrell tells him that his controversial theories combining time warps and paleontology inspired her. She shows him a 200 million year old 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. Holly convinces Rick to finish his tachyon amplifier and come help her on a seemingly routine expedition to the cave where Holly found the fossil, which is in the middle of a desert 100 miles outside Los Angeles.
With gift shop owner Will Stanton the three raft into the nearby Devil's Canyon Mystery cave, a poorly constructed horror themed ride made by Will, where Marshall has detected high levels of tachyons. He activates the tachyon amplifier, triggering an earthquake that opens a time warp into which the raft falls. The group finds themselves in a desert, filled with various items from many eras, and without the amplifier, they have no way of returning home. They rescue a primate-like creature, Cha-Ka, who becomes their friend and guide.
The group spends the night in Cha-ka's cave after surviving a meeting with a fast, intelligent Tyrannosaurus rex they nickname "Grumpy", after Rick had mocked him earlier for his "small brain and low intelligence." Marshall receives a telepathic message begging for help and finds himself in ancient ruins. The group encounters a race of lizardlike humanoid creatures called Sleestaks before entering a pocket dimension and meeting the one who sent Marshall the telepathic message, Enik the Altrusian. He explains that he was exiled by The Zarn, who is attempting to take over Earth with his Sleestak minions, but Enik can prevent this if Marshall retrieves the tachyon amplifier.
The group stumble upon a desert where many things from across time and space have ended up and they encounter many Compsognathus, Dromaeosaurs, Grumpy, and a female Allosaurus. The Allosaurus and Grumpy battle it out over a previously killed ice-cream seller until they sense Marshall and the others, deciding to work together instead of fighting over food. Marshall kills the Allosaurus with liquid nitrogen by using a catapult to launch it into the dinosaur's mouth, causing it to explode, and finds that the amplifier was eaten by the Allosaurus. The amplifier is then stolen by a Pteranodon and taken to its nest. Marshall becomes depressed and quickly admits defeat, knowing that they can never go back home. Later on, Holly confesses to Marshall that she threw away her career at Cambridge University due to Marshall's scientific theories, and that everyone called him a laughing stock, a loser, a nobody, and many ways that they described him. Marshall then apologizes to the group for dragging them into this crazy adventure. The group arrives at the nest and Marshall lightly steps through the Pteranodon eggs to retrieve the amplifier, but when he reaches it, it stops broadcasting the music. When the eggs begin to hatch, Holly realizes that the music was acting as a sort of lullaby keeping the baby Pteranodons asleep. Marshall, Will and Holly sing a song to lull them back to sleep. During the night, Marshal sings a tune to his colleagues to cheer them up, when a rather large mosquito lands on his shoulder where it pierces his neck and proceeds to drain a rather large amount of blood from Marshal to the point he becomes lethargic. The bug then moves to his back where proceeds to drain an insane amount to where Rick falls on the bug squashing it before passing out.
Marshall, Will and Cha-ka celebrate their good fortune by consuming a narcotic substance. Meanwhile, Holly goes exploring on her own and pockets a dinosaur egg and learns from a recording left by the long-deceased Zarn that Enik deceived them and he is actually the one planning to invade Earth. But she is captured by the Sleestaks while trying to warn the others and is to be brought to the Library of Skulls for judgment.
The others save her from being executed for helping Enik, but the villain—now possessing the amplifier, and mind-controlling the Sleestaks—leaves them to open a portal to Earth, where he will destroy mankind and repopulate his species. Marshall pole vaults into Grumpy's mouth after trying to defeat him and after removing an intestinal blockage, befriends him. He joins the others to defeat the Sleestak army and confront Enik in the pocket dimension. After the crystal link between the Land of the Lost and Earth is shattered during a fight with Marshall, Enik reveals the portal will close forever. Thinking fast, Marshall grabs Holly's crystal and inserts it into the port, knowing that the substitute crystal won't hold for long. Will chooses to stay behind to live a better life with Cha-ka and to prevent Enik from following Marshall and Holly back to Earth. Cha-Ka and Will arrive at the village with a harem of Pakuni women, his reward for saving the universe.
A triumphant Marshall again appears on Today with the dinosaur egg Holly brought back to promote his new book: Matt Lauer Can Suck It, causing Lauer to attack Marshall after being angered by the book title. Afterwards, the egg left behind on the Today set hatches, and a baby Sleestak hatches from it.
Cast[]
- Will Ferrell - Dr. Rick Marshall
- Anna Friel - Holly Cantrall
- Danny McBride - Will Stanton
- Jorma Taccone - Cha-Ka
- John Boylan - Enik
- Leonard Nimoy - The Zarn
- Matt Lauer - Himself
Trivia[]
- The original actors who played Holly and Will in the television series, Kathy Coleman and Wesley Eure, filmed cameos for the film. However, the final version of the film cut these scenes.
- The film serves as a parody of the original television series, similar to "Starsky & Hutch" and "The Brady Bunch Movie."
- Rick Marshall is a paleontologist in the film, not a park ranger as in the original series.
- In the original series, the main characters were the father and 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.
- Instead of being Marshall's son, the character of Will is an amusement park operator and survivalist.
- The film's budget also uses CGI special effects rather than the puppet and stop motion animation effects that defined the original series.
- While the original Saturday morning show targeted a child audience, the film was designed for a more adult audience and includes many adult-oriented references and humor. As a result, many fans of the series critically panned it, and in interviews where Ferrell was supposed to pitch the film, he frequently delineated to other topics. Today, the film holds an approval rating of 26% based on 188 reviews with an average rating of 4.1/10 on the Rotten Tomatoes website. Further, it has received generally negative reviews from critics, becoming a box office bomb, and grossing just $68 million against its $100 million budget. It received seven Golden Raspberry Award nominations, including Worst Picture while winning Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip-off or Sequel.