Land of the Lost is a fan's passionate fever dream adaptation if there ever was one. Having only caught the remake series when I was a kid, I have to say I liked this much more than the series I got, but I don't think I was the intended audience for this. Me and all the kids out there whose parents saw the show it's based on are in the dark. I have no desire to see it again, but that isn't to say it doesn't have redeeming qualities for a very particular viewership.
What they've come up with is really bizarre...I think in a good way. It's not as apparent as I'd like in the trailers just how inappropriate this is for kids. The humor is par for the course for a Will Ferrell-headlined, PG-13 comedy. It's no worse than they could be watching on primetime TV, but this isn't kids' Saturday Morning stuff.
Fans of the original show who I talked to afterward had very strong opinions one way or another. Either they thought it was a disaster or they felt it was uniquely made "just for them," condensing the entire series into one movie. The thing not everyone could agree on was the alterations made to the characters.
Holly and Will are not Rick Marshall's kids, they're a graduate student from Cambridge (England) and a redneck who operates cave exhibit. It's kind of weird for Holly to be Rick's love interest instead of his daughter. Did I say weird? I meant creepy.
I can almost explain my way out of the new "configuration" of the leads. They now describe The Land of the Lost as where the past and present meet the future, so it's some sort of interdimensional dump. Technically, the original show could have been about a parallel universe Rick, Will, and Holly who were related. In other words, they cover continuity about as well as the new Star Trek movie does. Then again, Sid & Marty Krofft's admiration for the banjo in Deliverance expressed in the EPK featurette on the new box set of the original show could mean something else...
Take into account that Universal passed out hats, Chaka backpacks, and two drink tickets to everyone at the screening here in Austin on Monday when you read local coverage. Personally, I trust Jenn Brown over at Slackerwood as the voice of a fan, since I don't fall into that category. I don't think she's posted a review yet. Her points here about pre-screening happy hours gets a full agreement from me.
As I was saying the other day, this movie is going to get massacred by no fault of its own. It's opening on the second weekend of a Pixar movie and it's up against The Hangover, which has a huge buzz train going, on top of the fact it's a kids' TV show adaptation that isn't for kids. Before I'd seen this movie, I knew it had an uphill climb.
The dumbest thing Universal has done was make the Tonight Show clip from Conan's first program that of Will Ferrell dumping urine on himself. That didn't win them any more business.
The movie isn't much more than a diversion. You either have to "get" this as a tribute piece to something you don't understand, or be a big, forgiving fan of the original to feel like it's worth the money. I could see myself having gladly waited to see the dinosaurs on cable rather than pay for it, had I not seen it for free.