Land of the Lost (2009)

In his big-screen remake of The Land of the Lost, Will Ferrell plays an amiable crackpot, Dr. Rick Marshall, whose theories for solving all the world's problems involve the harnessing of time warps -- and he would have done it too, if not for that meddling news guy Matt Lauer, who led the rest of the world in laughing Dr. Rick into oblivion. Scoot forward through time (in linear fashion as all mortals must) a decade or so as Rick stumbles across an admiring Cambridge grad who happens to be female, British, and hot -- in the geeky sense that she is a) female, b) British, c) geeky, and d) older and slightly more stylish than Ugly Betty. She agrees to be his field assistant and help prove the worth of his backpack-sized Tachyon Inducer. The best locale turns out to be a deserted tourist trap, where after a few tongue-in-cheek scenes they experience "the greatest earthquake ever known" (as Rick later sings while plucking a banjo in homage to the original TV series' opening sequence) and fall through time and space into The Land of the Lost. In this movie, however, all kinds of artifacts -- from ancient culture to modern kitsch -- find themselves lost in the wasteland -- and the helpful Sleestak is more than he first appears to be. The remake is an admirable reimagining of the TV series and the scenes with the T-Rex are a hoot and a half. Make no mistake, this remake is seriously campy and tongue-in-cheek and Will Ferrell eats it up in low-key fashion. (I like him a lot in this movie and I have rarely liked him in much beyond Elf and Curious George.) Think of a goofier The Librarian: Quest for the Spear or a Scooby Doo live-action movie with slightly more self-respect. Two gross-out scenes involve Rick coating himself in dino pee and dino doodoo but the excretion factor is kept to a minimum (though small kids may wonder about an off-camera scene Rick repeatedly refers to as "tapping that ass"). Aside from that groaner, I laughed a lot and really liked Will Ferrell in this one. The other actors did fine too but the T-Rex showed more personality than perhaps any previous dinosaur and more humans than you'd think in sci-fi filmdom. 4 stars. (10-20-09 posted 7-9-10)