CINEMA: 10,000 BC

Well, here’s a woolly mammoth story if ever there was one – a classic tale of boy wins girl, boy loses girl and boy has to go on an epic journey in order to get her back. However, this is not a classic movie in any sense of the word, mainly because the plot is so one-dimensional it could have been created by a five-year-old with very little imagination (which may be doing a disservice to five-year-olds!)

Time to ignore everything you actually know about history and enter a time when man co-existed on the planet with the above mentioned woolly mammoths and sabre-toothed tigers and was intent on building pyramids. A remote and isolated mammoth hunting clan has adopted an orphaned baby girl with blue eyes. As she grows, she becomes a great beauty (Camille Belle) and falls in love with a hunter boy (Steven Strait) who in turn loves her back. When she is abducted by another war-like clan which is roaming the countryside capturing slaves to work on the construction of its vast pyramids, her love vows to track her and bring her back.

And that is basically that – a chase movie over the snowy mountains and arid deserts to a great city on a bend in the river where there is the mother of all showdowns, complete with rampaging mammoths. But there are no plot deviations or sub-stories, no subtleties or complexities.

As per usual, director Roland Emmerich goes for the set piece and neglects the nuances of background or character development, which would have made this a far superior film. Yes, some of the special effects are impressive, but there is far too little of the sabre-toothed tiger and rather a lot of mammoth. The actors look like hippies picked up from a Thai beach, rather than hunter/gatherers honed by the elements and hunger, while narrator Omar Sharif sounds like he’s taken one camel ride too many and is bored rigid by proceedings.

If you are looking for a film that goes from A to B as the crow flies and will need very little effort on your part to understand then here’s an action/adventure flick that’s more snack than satisfying three course meal. Dee Pilgrim