Here are some things you may not know about what life was like 10,000 years before Christ was born. First off, there was a whole tribe of folks who spoke English, although many of them had accents that seemed only vaguely identifiable. You also probably didn't know that prehistory could produce a movie that looks like a cross between a National Geographic spread -- circa 1950 -- a Joseph Campbell lecture, an Edgar Rice Burroughs pulp novel and Mel Gibson's "Apocalypto." Put another way, Emmerich has made a movie in which the greatest pleasures arise from the inadvertent laughter that results from portentous dialogue and an inflated sense of seriousness.Me tell story now: The movie's main character -- D'Leh (Steven Strait) -- tries to save his girlfriend Evolet (Camilla Belle) who has been kidnapped by a band of cruel warlords. Along the way, D'Leh seeks help from a variety of other tribes, and Emmerich throws as many special effects into the mix as possible -- from giant woolly mammoths to what appear to be predatory ostriches.
All of this culminates at the headquarters of a Mayan-like civilization that enslaves its captives to build pyramids in scenes that look as if Mel Gibson's primal instincts have been channeled into Cecil B. DeMille.
Mythic mumbo-jumbo collides with computer-generated vistas, and the result is little more than grand-scale junk.
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