The reason comedy is an art and not a science is that in comedy, you can follow the exact same formula that did great last time, only to have it blow up in your face like an unfunny bomb, which is crazy because explosions are always funny.
Imagine if the same uncertainty did apply to the formulas of science! I would have sucked even worse at geometry, which in turn would have sucked for everyone, as we'd all have to memorize a bunch of new letters that come after F. Some guy in a lab coat would be trying to whip up a batch of dihydrogen monoxide and suddenly poof! he'd turn into a potted daisy instead.
It must be hard to deal with that as a comedy writer. Those guys are the greatest heroes we've got, even more than Mark McGwire, and he hit 70 home runs. Still, that doesn't excuse them when they totally botch up a tried recipe like in the new Land of the Lost.
Scientist Will Ferrell believes it's possible to travel through time and space to other dimensions, a theory so laughable that he's soon playing tour guide to surly kids at the La Brea Tar Pits.
But doctoral student Anna Friel believes in him. With her inspiration, Ferrell finishes his time-warping tachyon amplifier, but on their first test run it works too well, zapping them into an alternate world and then goes missing.
Without it, they can't get home. They soon learn it's even worse: an evil lizard-monster named Zarn wants to use the tachyon amplifier to open portals to other dimensions, where his army of lizard slaves will destroy everything they find.
Ferrell, Friel, and redneck sidekick Danny McBride flee through The Land of the Lost like it's a monster-filled murder emporium, but I say being trapped there would be pretty sweet. The T-Rexes are so smart they understand English! And Friel can pick up the intricacies of ape-man speech within minutes of meeting them! In fact, you know how in this world there are laws of physics and biology, and they're called laws because you can't break them? Well, in their world, they get to break those laws whenever it's convenient for the plot or it's time for a big action scene! How cool would that be? Pretty damn cool, right?
Cool to live in, not so cool to watch. Is it asking too much that a comedy remake of a pulp sci-fi classic pay at least a little heed to reality? Well too bad, because this movie isn't nearly funny enough to give it the benefit of the doubt.
I'm usually on board with Ferrel's ludicrous blowhard thing, but in this case it fails as bad as our last president, which might sound like a cheap shot until you remember Ferrel does a pretty funny job impersonating him.
Where's that talent here? Dunno, but I'm ready to cast blame on writers Chris Henchy and Dennis McNicholas, a couple of TV veterans trying desperately to mine that formerly rich comedic vein of overconfident, chatty idiots who are always wrong about everything. Also, their knowledge of dinosaurs appears to be limited to whatever was in Jurassic Park.
Odd, that, since the CGs in Land of the Lost look worse than Jurassic Park's, too. That's the problem with being too derivative: stealing from past successful entertainment is an excellent move, but if you steal too much without adding anything new (I'm looking at you, Shakespeare), you'll just make everyone wish they were watching whatever you stole from instead. (On a side note, this is basically the entire problem with all New Zealand cinema right now: I love Peter Jackson too, but if you steal one more of his shots I'm just going to pop Dead Alive in instead. You've been warned, New Zealand.)
This foolishness can't even steal right from what it's remaking. The whole "sleeslak invaders are going to slaughter everything everywhere" thing doesn't mean a damn when it's constantly thrown aside in favor of unspectacular action and played-out jokes. As I was watching Land of the Lost and trying to figure out how I felt about it, I kept thinking "Well, I could be more annoyed right now." That's not a good thing. Neither is this movie.
Grade: D