Land of the Lost (PG-13)
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So, this is a 2009 movie based on the 1974-77 TV series Land of the Lost. I was too young to see the show when it first aired (it actually started the year before I was born), but I did eventually see some of the show in reruns. Anyway, the movie... seems to be sort of a spoof of the series, or I might say an affectionate parody. It shares some similarities of plot, though I don't remember the series well enough to really comment on that. There are definitely things that are ironic allusions to the show. But as much as the series itself was pretty cheesy, this movie is much more over-the-top redonkulous. I think the show was supposed to be sort of serious, but the movie is straight-up comedy. It's not that good, though. I mean, I found some bits pretty funny, but there were also lots of things in the movie that were just unbearably stupid. (I'm not saying some of the stuff I found funny wasn't stupid, just that I didn't find all of the stupid things funny.) And I'd understand if some people didn't find any of it funny. (Though there are also tons of people out there who find a great deal of humor in some things that I find just plain stupid. I'm not sure if anyone feels that way about this movie, but I would fail to understand how it's possible for them not to, considering some other things they find funny that I see as no different from this. But I don't want to get into a rant....)

Anyway. Will Ferrell plays a crackpot scientist named Dr. Rick Marshall, who has this theory about using some kind of interdimensional energy or whatever. And everyone thinks he's crazy. One day, he meets a British scientist named Holly (played by Anna Friel, who was the main reason I wanted to watch this movie). She believes in his theories, and has made some discoveries that rekindle his lost passion for those theories. This includes a fossil of Rick's own cigarette lighter, from millions of years ago. So he builds a device called a "tachyon amplifier," and they go out to where she found it, I guess, which is a lame tourist attraction run by a guy named Will. (In the show, Will and Holly were Rick Marshall's teenaged son and daughter, so that's a big difference from the movie.) And the amplifier ends up transporting the three of them to a world where past, present, and future get mixed together. Or something. Mostly it's a prehistoric seeming world, with a desert and caves and swamps I guess. There are dinosaurs (including a T-Rex that takes a particular disliking to Rick), and they befriend a monkeyish guy called Cha-Ka (whose language Holly somehow understands). And there are all sorts of buildings and vehicles and stuff that somehow get transported to this world (which makes me wonder how no one in the present notices them disappearing). Actually, there's stuff from various periods in history. And... eventually they meet these lizard-men called Sleestaks, and there's one guy who looks kind of like a Sleestak, but is actually an Altrusian named Enik, who says he needs Rick's help. He needs the tachyon amplifier (which was lost during the trip to this world).

So, anyway. Basically the plot is that the three humans, along with Cha-Ka, have to try to find the amplifier, while avoiding frequent attacks from the T-Rex. And stuff. There's a twist near the end that I totally predicted (which I think is not at all like the series, but I could be wrong). And... I don't want to say how it ends.

There are some cool things in the movie, I guess. And lots of just plain weird things, as well as ridiculous things. (I cannot overemphasize the ridiculousness of this movie. Or the grossness of some parts.) And... like I said, some parts of the movie are actually funny, IMHO. It did quite poorly both critically and financially, and that's as it should be, but still... it didn't totally suck.