Land of the Lost

If you’re struggling to see how yet another remake of yet another ancient TV series will engage you, try employing the help of a six-year-old. They actually tend to enjoy seeing Will Ferrell riding a T-Rex into cardboard space sets, and at least you can enjoy their enjoyment.

Has-been scientist Dr Rick Marshall (Ferrell), given the encouragement of feisty Cambridge grad Holly (Anna Friel), goes to the desert to test his time travel device – an accordion. Together with red neck yokel Will (Danny McBride), they get suctioned into the Land of the Lost. There, amidst desert plain and rainforest, and alongside a mammary grabbing primate (Jorma Taccone), they negotiate rubber men, dinosaurs and dimensional crystals to get back home.

There’s an endearing mixture of consciously crap and clever CGI at work here, especially in the ‘tripping’ scene where music, visuals and humour combine into a riff that sums up the film’s post-post-modern objective: to recreate its TV origins, replete with homage to ’70s limitations, while simultaneously poking fun at them and creating contemporary comedy. And you thought they were just goofing around!

But none of this would work at all if the three leads weren’t quite so good. Ferrell does nothing new, but Danny McBride is an inspiration, and Friel holds her own as the straight girl – fresh, spunky and kinda herself.

Do we need Land of the Lost? No. But then you could say the same of a great deal of entertainment wallpaper that’s still, well, entertaining. But the film falls between demographic stools. The humour is too smart for kids, too unsophisticated for adults. That just leaves teenagers, who may not be attracted to a self-consciously ‘family’ film. Neither conventional action-adventure or enough of an out-there pastiche, this really is the land of the lost.

Lórien Haynes

Anticipation:

Would take a pterodactyl on your tail to chase you into the cinema.

Enjoyment:

Ferrell goes feral.

In Retrospect:

Gone and soon forgotten.