The Case for an Ice Age

I am no expert on the ancient world, but I am pretty certain that Woolly Mammoths were located in cold climates (say Ice Age Europe), Sabre Tooth tigers and Terror Birds in South America, and Africans and Egypt in… well, Africa; and that the continents themselves were pretty much in the same positions they are now. I am also fairly certain that the economics of the time would have made a slave gathering expedition that went from desert plains through tropical jungle over mountain ranges and through the lands of many, more easily apprehended locals fairly impractical in a cost-benefit analysis.

But then, 10,000 BC doesn’t really purport to be a historically accurate or plausible rendering of life a long time ago. What it does claim to be is an action flick high on special effects. That it isn’t is pretty unforgivable.

Early on, we are introduced to a tribe of mountain dwellers hunting Woolly Mammoths, though they have fallen on hard times. The tribe’s priestess has a vision that they will be saved, and promptly dies. Well, actually, she doesn’t, but by her 7^th fainting spell, you kind of wish she had, or at least would. After a dull 30 minutes (or 30 hours), a bit of plot happens, so a quest is undertaken by our young, buff hero and Cliff Curtis (and some other young-but-less-buff cannon fodder), and off they go around the world.

And there is walking. A lot of walking. In some films, the trek would be an excuse for character development, but not in this one. We did learn that ancient man spoke English, but because it was ancient times, their English lacked pronouns and prepositions and had to be spoken in a deep voice and with the odd grunt thrown in for good measure. The main actors kind of gave up on their accents at one point, the American twang and Nu Zild accent creeping into the manly pronouncements. The baddies spoke another language entirely, and seemed to have their voices digitally lowered to sound even deeper than the heroes, probably to emphasise their badness. The fact the baddies also look fairly Arabic is (I am sure) purely keeping with historic fact, though the fact the big baddie seems to be a white dude is an interesting twist.

I thought possibly I was being too harsh, until I realised my movie companion, along with most of the laddish moviegoers around me, were similarly disenchanted with the film. A guy next to me began a “Die old witch!” chant, and the rows in front of me barely waited for the lights to come off to run screaming into the lobby looking for the mouth of the nearest Sabre Tooth Tiger into which to stick their heads after the truly awful ending.

Verdict: I was not expecting a masterpiece, and I did not get one. I did expect a bit of a thrill ride, and was disappointed to find a merry go round in its place. So bad, it was just bad. Two Woolly Mammoths out of ten (for the scenery).