I didn't care for Independence Day and Day After Tomorrow is one of the worst movies ever made. As if that's not enough, Emmerich's list of credits also includes Stargate - the first movie I ever walked out of. Perhaps not surprisingly, 10,000 BC is a worthy successor to all those half-efforts.
I'm no historian, but I'm pretty sure that tribal cave-like men hunting mastodons didn't co-mingle with the Egyptians building the pyramids, as this movie wants us to believe.
They speak in English, but their phony "accents" are anywhere from Bulgarian to German to British to Pathetic. Unbelievably, it's narrated by Omar Sharif, who I thought might have even been faking an accent.
I've never heard of Steve Strait (D'Leh), and Cliff Curtis (Tic-Tic) should be ashamed of himself (he was in Once We Were Warriors, fer crissakes) and what a waste of Camilla Bell (Evolet). She was kind of good in When a Stranger Calls, bringing teenage believability to her tormented babysitter role. In BC she gets blue eyes and two lines. The movie is a Romeo/Juliet story from the hokey beginning to the cornball conclusion, complete with trial by hunting, the old fortuneteller woman, the kindly spear-holder, the kindlier natives and other people they meet along the way. In fact, everyone is pretty darn friendly except the slave traders (four-legged demons) and the Almighty, a shrouded, long-finger-nailed Egyptian creep.
The CGI attributes include mastodons, a ridiculous run-in with a bunch of dodo birds, and the cool saber-toothed tiger which I was hoping (from the previews) was going to be heavily featured, has only two short scenes. I guess all that CGI energy went to the talking lion in Narnia...
There is no blood in the fight scenes. Two notably horrible scenes sent me into disbelief mode. First, the "heroes" break into the jail housing the slaves to enlist the would-be warriors to help them fight the Almighty and his minions. Then, the heroes leave the jail, only to return to help the slaves escape the next day. If it was so easy to come and go, why didn't they all leave? The other scene was the blind, gibberish-spewing, all-wise seer that the prisoners hide from the guards underground, just to pull him out to rattle off nonsense, tell the future, then stick him back in the ground. Why the guards never find him or how he survives is never explained. I guess he must live on their urine.
There's plenty of guiding light mumbo-jumbo and signs from the gods to further stagnate the plot. This movie screams for Yul Bryner and Anthony Quinn to save it. If I ever catch myself watching another one of Emmerich's movies by accident, I'm going the way of the gibberish-spewing blind guy-I'd rather be under ground drinking urine than suffering through anything this lame again.
