10,000 B.C. (2008)

This movie is not all that bad; it is nothing special, but I do not regret watching it. 10,000 B.C. is the story of a young, prehistoric mammoth hunter who is forced into a leadership role after his fellow tribesmen, including the woman he loves, are abducted and forced into slavery. This movie can best be described as a non-pretentious version of the Mel Gibson disaster Apocalypto. 10,000 B.C. is not a terrific movie, but the director and producers were obviously aware of that, so decided to focus on interesting special effects and exciting action scenes rather than creating believable story lines and multidimensional characters. I feel like this was an excellent decision and helped to make this film a lot more watchable. There are some really cool special effects in this movie, including multiple dinosaur-like creatures and a moderately believable saber tooth tiger which alone almost make the movie worth seeing. The acting in this film is adequate at best, and there is really no one of significance to discuss, but again, this movie is not about the acting, it is about seeing cool, prehistoric shit. The plot of 10,000 B.C. is pretty stupid and for the most part pointless, and the first ten minutes were so dull that I almost phoned it in. However, the movie quickly picks up, and gets interesting enough that I was interested in seeing how it ended. My wife had no interest in this film, and I am not surprised, she would have found it stupid. There is definitely an audience for this type of movie; people who liked the new King Kong or Godzilla movies are likely to enjoy it. This film was not horrible, but it was far from great; I will never watch it again. I give 10,000 B.C. 2 stars.