Movie Report: 10,000 B.C. (2008)

I so wanted to like this movie. I really did.

I guess I'll have to learn to live with disappointment. Because what was a really cool idea ended up as kind of a hot mess.

So to save you $10, I'll tell you what happens.

We start with a noble, multiracial (not sure about that one) hunter-gatherer tribe -- if by hunter-gatherer you mean stay in one place all year waiting for the wooly mammoths to wander by, so you can kill one and eat mammoth meat until the next one shows up.

The tribe's led by an old Eskimo woman predicting doom and gloom, and our hero's dad takes off for slightly less doom. The hero grows up, falls in love with the hottest chick in the tribe and hunts mammoths, if by hunts you mean manages by some miracle not to get trampled and stabs it on accident.

This blissful (?) existence is shattered when Arab horsemen come looking for slaves. They snatch up a bunch of people, including the hot chick, and take off. Of course the hero has to search for the hot chick, so he, an old hunter and a kid sidekick take off.

They cross the Alps, and find themselves in a tropical jungle, where they are attacked by giant chickens. Don't ask me to explain this -- I can't.

They go from jungle to desert and run into some African tribesmen, who have been attacked by the Arabs too. The tribesmen knew Hero's dad, who taught them Europe's only language.

There's a bunch of stuff with a sabertooth tiger, who apparently has no taste for Heroes and is almost as loyal as a Disney character.

The tribesmen and Hero and his guys decide to team up and fight the Arabs. There is one really cool image of the Arab's beautiful ships, which was almost worth the price of the matinee.

Then instead of following the river, which might have food and water, the band decides to strike out across an enormous desert. They wander around until they get the idea to follow the north star, which leads to slavers' camps as well as Santa's workshop.

So they follow the star to ... a pyramid? With lots of slaves and some desert-dwelling wooly mammoths working to build things for some Egyptian/Atlantean/Alien guy with long pointy fingernails.

Hero guy steals a scene from Braveheart, and the slaves rebel. Big fight, then he steals a scene from 300 and throws a spear at Egyptian/Atlantean/Alien guy.

Alien guy and some albinos run for their ship, which is inside a pyramid and no where near water. Slaves kill them a lot, but hot chick dies.

Far, far away, old Eskimo woman dies, and that brings hot chick back to life.

The tribesmen give the hunter-gatherers seeds to crops that somehow grew in a desert. The hunter-gatherers walk home (shoulda save one of those ships) and plant the seeds at the base of a glacier. Where they grow.

I don't think I'm going to buy the DVD.