At some point, we’ve all felt embarrassment for actors appearing in less than flattering roles, but the faceless narrator usually escapes our pity, regardless of the content of the film. Not in 10,000 B.C. Recounting the “legend” of a dreadlocked mammoth hunter named D’Leh (Steven Strait) as he follows a group of horse-backed plunderers who stole his woman (Camilla Belle), I couldn’t stop picturing Omar Sharif in the recording studio looking at his script and saying, “But… but… I was in Lawrence of Arabia!” When was the last time you were embarrassed for a narrator?
Badmouthing a film like 10,000 B.C. though is akin to giving the proverbial dead horse a good beating. There’s so little substance to the film and so many anachronisms that pointing out a single one is like attacking Britney Spears by claiming that she’s a “little loony.” There’s so little substance to the film and so many anachronisms that pointing out a single one is like attacking Britney Spears by claiming that she’s a “little loony.” As D’Leh tracks the girlfriend-stealing evildoers over snowy mountains, through dripping rainforest, across the plains of Africa (where luckily all tribes speak the same language), and into the deserts of Egypt, the plot is stretched so thin that it’s almost irrelevant. We’ve seen all of this before, only better.
Yet, oddly enough, it’s disturbingly hard to look away. It’s almost as if you’re watching an unintentional parody of the film built into the very film itself. Instead of waiting for 9999 B.C. to ratchet up the absurdity, 10,000 B.C. comes off like a parody of 10,000 B.C. that is happening as you’re watching the movie! With the glut of painfully obvious spoofs that have surfaced recently (including Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans, Scary Movie 27) perhaps co-screenwriters Harald Kloser and director Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, Godzilla) decided to stave off the inevitable comedic imitations by making their film as impossibly nonsensical as possible. How do you parody a scene where a caveman leader convinces others to follow him into battle by commanding his translator “Tell them I’m older than I look.”?
And though it’s a live action film, 10,000 B.C. does consistently feel like a cartoon; a fact that has little to do with the impressively bad CGI creatures and landscapes. The characters are painted in broad strokes, the action is safely PG, and the plot is infantile. Remarkably, an actual cartoon, The Land Before Time, is easily on equal footing with 10,000 B.C. historically -- if cavemen spoke English, maybe dinosaurs did too. Ice Age followed a similarly mindless (and occasionally slapstick) travelogue, though much more effectively. And Beavis & Butthead Do America may have had a leg up as far as level of intelligence required for viewing.
The forehead-slapping, slow-head-shaking, groan-inducing characters and storylines produce some of the most boldly vacuous cinematic sequences ever projected onto the big screen. This allows audiences a beautiful amount of detachment from the story. Rather than having to deal with that annoying thing called emotional investment, viewers can sit idly by as the story progresses, not actually caring if D’Leh ever makes it to his beloved Evolet or if he discovers the true warrior spirit that he has hidden within. In fact, when he tells a giant sabre-toothed tiger “Don’t eat me when I set you free,” audiences can feel free to laugh incredulously rather than to worrying about his safety.
In all fairness, Emmerich has never been known for subtle plot twists or nuanced characters, but sharing writing credits with composer Kloser has brought Emmerich to a new low. “Lower than The Day After Tomorrow?” you ask, incredulously. Yes. 10,000 times yes.
yes, it's true: The politically correct way of expressing the time before the year zero is as "B.C.E."; Before the Common Era.
