10,000 Years of Disappointment

The movie directed by Roland Emmerich had some serious flaws that made the two-hour "epic" feel like a 10,000 year long film put on a very slooooowwww motion.

For starters the movie that boasted Independence Day and Day After Tomorrow as the director's credit failed to get a casting director worth his salary. From the very beginning of the mammoth-ly disappointing film the viewers were assaulted by
the implausibility of a tribe of what looked like an American Indian people with an admixture of characters from the present-day United Nation.

There was a Middle Eastern tribal leader (who also looked like the New Zealander in Whale Rider) who was with an American Indian priestess, the protagonist was clearly Caucasian but his friend was Black Latin American. Some women of the tribe looked strikingly Malaysian and even Filipinos. And of course, the lady love of the film was of Hispanic-Asian descent. Go figure. We thought this movie was about a pre-historic tribe fighting to survive the glacial age and slave traders. Why should they be of mixed ancestry? At least Mel Gibson (of another hugely disappointing movie, Apocalypto) had the decency of putting characters who more or less resembled one another in physiognomy.

Then there is the problem of language: never mind that the movie was in English (although that one was also jarring to the ears), but do the tribesmen have to speak in different accents? Or speak fluently like a modern English speaker does? Whew!

Finally, the long-winded journey was really looooooooooooong. Though it was punctuated by some chase scenes (that awakened me and my friend in between our naps), the whole story seemed trite and shallow, a hyped spin to the old caveman epic that brought nothing new expect so so CGI animation.

And then the teeth! This was supposed to be before dental procedures were invented, why do they all have sparkling white teeth when sabre-tooth cats were still roaming around?

Oh, well one can argue that I'm missing the big picture by nitpicking on the nitty-gritty details.
But sometimes, you know, when you aim for the big thing, you ought to pay attention to the little ones as well.

Back to the Land Before Time guys! It's more satisfying.