Dammit Jim!

So I went into this expecting it to be pretty horrible (Rotten Tomatoes is giving it a 8%.) but I like the theme and wanted to see the CGI animals. Unfortunately, the whole thing seemed recycled from other movies and forced. They really wasted a good theme by not even bothering to accurately portray the animals or the history. That said it did keep me and the girlfriend mildly entertained (then again we still haven’t bought a TV so our entertainment criteria is pretty low).

The movie starts out with what I would assume is a fairly good guess at what life was like in 10,000 BC; huts, fire and hunter gatherers. After a few adventures, the characters reach another tribe of people who are just starting to grow their own crops. Again pretty accurate. 10,000 BC is right around when people are thought to have discovered agriculture. After a few more adventures, the history goes right out the window as the heroes run into a full fledged Egyptian culture complete with writing, pyramids, maps of the world and sailing ships. The movies takes one sentence to explain this anachronism as either aliens or Atlantis. This seemed pretty silly to me since we would definitely have archaeological records of such an advanced civilization. Why not just call it 2,000 BC? (Probably because they couldn’t have mammoths then.) As a final punch in the historical gut, the movie ends with the hero receiving a gift of seeds including corn. Pretty annoying (and completely unnecessary) since corn is from the Americas and would not reach the Old World for another 11,500 years. That’s about all I have to say about the history and the plot.

The movie had quite a few (I feel) bad movie making decisions. First right at the start of the movie, everyone decides to cover their faces in mud (a la Braveheart). I’m sure mud facial decorations were common in many ancient tribes but I really don’t think it’s the best idea when the audience is just being introduced to the characters. Then throughout the movie it continually flashes over to show an old witch doctor lady from the village. Besides her being pretty uncharismatic, I thought this was pretty unnecessary to the plot. (Yes I realize they were setting up the ending but I think the mammoth had that taken care of already). Also, the tribe talks in an assortment of phony accents. I saw in a preview/advertisement that the director wanted to do the whole thing in subtitles (a la Apocalypto). I like subtitles much more than dubbing in foreign flicks but since no one has any idea how they spoke 12,000 years ago this seemed kind of stupid. I guess funny accents were the next best thing for him. If you do watch the movie, I swear somewhere in the first part at the village someone is doing a Scarface impression. Let me know if you catch it too. Also, there was a huge amount of noisy pixels in some of the dark shots. I’ve never noticed this in a Hollywood movie before. Not sure why they’d let that through into the final copy.

Finally the part that let me down the most was the computer generated animals. We only get three types in this movie; mammoths, some sort of giant bird and a sabertooth tiger. The birds seemed animated well enough but you never get a real good look at them. The tiger seemed pretty good in the dark but in the light it really looked fake and didn’t seem to move quite right. Also contrary to what the poster would have you believe, the tiger gets about 45 seconds of screen time. The mammoths are in a lot of the movie and oddly enough are often shown galloping with two front feet in the air followed by two back feet. I’m no elephant expert but this looked completely phony to me so I decided to look through the literature once I got home and it looks like it is in fact completely phony (I’ll post about this tomorrow Update: here). Overall the CGI seemed about equivalent to a Discovery channel show which is sort of a let down when they’re supposed to be a highlight of a Hollywood movie.

Now after all those negatives, I do have to give it some credit. Despite all the shortcomings, I was entertained for the parts where I wasn’t groaning at the accents, history or biology. It’s not a horrible movie, it’s just not all that good.

As we were walking out of the theater, I asked Xiaofen how she liked the movie. She said “It was pretty fleshy”. After figuring out that she wasn’t saying flashy, I had to agree that that was actually a pretty good descriptor. Rambo went beyond bloody all the way to “fleshy” (but I’d have to say in an enertaining way).

Although the movie is pretty “fleshy”, excluding the bloody start you’re pretty much always rooting against the people getting bloodily killed. I think that kind of reduces the impact. That said the beginning was pretty hard to watch since it was just normal people. I suppose the movie was trying to get a message across though and it certainly does bring home just what news stories about genocide actually mean.

The special effects and stunts were very good. I’m not sure if it was the movie theater (you get what you paid for) or the movie’s style (perhaps in tribute to the older Rambos?) but the film seemed a little grainy and low contrast. That didn’t detract from the movie though. I can’t remember if there was a soundtrack or not so I guess that’s the best kind. The plot was pretty good (especially for a Rambo movie) and I have to say they managed to trick me near the end (avoiding spoilers).

The acting was decent although the girl seemed a little stiff at the start. I guess she didn’t have the most natural of lines though. Stallone did a pretty good job throughout I thought. I actually had to google Stallone to see how old he is. Turns out 61. I was guessing 50 at most. I hope I’m in that good a shape at 61 (or now). Although now that I think about it, I think he did manage to keep his shirt on for the entire movie (which I think gave him more chance for acting).