Land Of The Lost
Directed by Brad Silberling
Starring Will Ferrell, Anna Friel, Danny McBride, Jorma Taccone
Rated PG-13
Release date: June 5, 2009

If you were a child of the ’70s, there’s a good chance you were glued to the TV on Saturday mornings waiting impatiently for one of the Krofft-produced series to come on. A favorite with all the kids I knew was Land Of The Lost, about Rick Marshall and his two children, Will and Holly, whose plummet down a waterfall finds them trapped in an alternate dimension populated by bipedal lizard creatures, ape-like cavemen, and dinosaurs. The new Land Of The Lost is based on this children’s television show, but as is the trend these days, instead of being a faithful big-screen adaptation, the movie is more a mockery of the original. When it’s not poking fun at its small-screen predecessor, it’s incessantly winking at it.

While all the names are the same, the characters have been drastically altered and the entire premise changed. Instead of Rick Marshall the dad, he’s now Dr. Rick Marshall, a scientist whose far-out theories about time warps have disgraced him right out of the scientific community, and he’s played greatly for laughs by Will Ferrell. In lieu of two kids, Will (Danny McBride) is now a wannabe casino owner biding his time as a guide at a makeshift tourist attraction and Holly (Anna Friel) is an attractive British graduate student who happens to be the only person who has any faith in Rick’s theories. While testing out one of Will’s theories with his Tachyon amplifier, the trio in their tiny raft go plummeting right into the “land of the lost,” a parallel universe populated with — yup — hostile lizard men (the Sleestaks), ape men (Jorma Taccone), and dinosaurs.