Land of the Lost (film)

''Land of the Lost'' is a 2009 American science fiction adventure comedy film directed by Brad Silberling, written by Chris Henchy and Dennis McNicholas and starring Will Ferrell, Danny McBride and Anna Friel, loosely based on the 1974 Sid and Marty Krofft television series of the same name. The film was theatrically released on June 5, 2009 by Universal Pictures.

The film received generally negative reviews from critics and was a box office bomb, grossing just $68 million against its $100 million budget. It received seven Golden Raspberry Award nominations, including Worst Picture, winning Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip-off or Sequel.

Plot

Pompous paleontologist Rick Marshall has a low-level job at the La Brea Tar Pits, three years after a disastrous interview with Matt Lauer on ''Today'' went viral and ruined his career. Doctoral candidate from Cambridge Holly Cantrell tells him that his controversial theories combining time warps and paleontology inspired her.

She shows him a fossil with an imprint of a cigarette lighter that he recognizes as his own, along with a crystal made into a necklace that gives off strong tachyon energy. She convinces him to finish his tachyon amplifier and go on an expedition to the cave where Holly found the fossil, in the desert.

They raft into the cave, with cave gift shop owner Will Stanton, where Marshall detects high levels of tachyons. Activating the tachyon amplifier triggers an earthquake, opening a time warp the raft falls into. They find themselves in an inter-dimensional desert, filled with items from many eras, and without the amplifier. They rescue Cha-Ka, a Pakuni (a primate-like creature), who becomes their friend and guide.

They spend a night in a cave after surviving a meeting with a fast and intelligent ''Tyrannosaurus'' they nickname "Grumpy", who develops a grudge against Marshall for calling him "stupid". Marshall receives a telepathic message begging for help and finds himself in ancient ruins. They encounter a race of lizard men called Sleestaks before meeting Enik the Altrusian (who sent the message). Exiled by the Zarn, who wants to take over Earth with his Sleestak minions, Enik can prevent the invasion if Marshall gets the tachyon amplifier.

The group stumbles across a desert with many things from across time, encountering many ''Compsognathus'', Dromaeosaurs, Grumpy, and a female ''Allosaurus'' nicknamed "Big Alice". These last two are battling it out over a dead ice-cream seller, who was killed by the ''Compsognathus'' and Dromaeosaurs, until they sense Marshall and chase him. Marshall kills Big Alice with liquid nitrogen, finding the amplifier was eaten by the ''Allosaurus''. A '' Pteranodon'' then steals it, taking it to its nest. Marshall lightly steps through the pterosaur eggs to retrieve the amplifier in the nest. When he reaches it, it stops playing the music (Marshall's favorite musical ''A Chorus Line''). The eggs begin to hatch, and they realize the music was keeping the baby pterosaurs asleep. Marshall, Will and Holly belt out " I Hope I Get It", with Cha-Ka joining in, displaying a great singing voice, much to Marshall's surprise. (As well as the viewers').

Marshall, Will and Cha-Ka celebrate, Holly takes a dinosaur egg and learns from a recording left by the long-deceased Zarn that Enik is lying (he is the one planning the Earth invasion). She is captured by the Sleestaks, and brought to the Library of Skulls for judgment. The others save her, but the villain, with the amplifier, and controlling the Sleestaks, leaves to open a portal to Earth.

Marshall pole vaults into Grumpy's mouth and (after removing an intestinal blockage), finally befriends him. He joins the others to defeat the Sleestak army and confront Enik. After the crystal link between the Land of the Lost and Earth is shattered, Enik reveals the portal will close forever. Thinking fast, Marshall grabs Holly's crystal, inserting it into the port. Knowing the substitute crystal won't hold for long, they leave quickly. Will chooses to stay, learning later that female Pakuni are very attractive.

A triumphant Marshall reappears on ''Today'' with the dinosaur egg Holly brought back, promoting his new book ''"Matt Lauer Can Suck It!"''. The egg left behind on the ''Today'' set hatches a baby Sleestak, which hisses as the screen goes black.

Cast

* Will Ferrell as Dr. Rick Marshall, a renowned paleontologist and author, determined to prove his theory on time warps, thus embarking on a time travel experiment.
* Anna Friel as Holly Cantrell, a doctoral candidate from Cambridge, and Rick's biggest fan.
* Danny McBride as Will Stanton, a gift shop owner who takes Holly and Rick to a tachyon-rich cave.
* Jorma Taccone as Cha-Ka, a Pakuni who befriends Rick, Holly, and Will.
* John Boylan as Enik, an Altrusian who plans to invade and conquer Earth, and deceives Rick and the others into believing otherwise; he also controls the Sleestak.
* Matt Lauer as Himself
* Ben Best as Ernie
* Leonard Nimoy as the voice of The Zarn
* Douglas Tait as Sleestak
* Landon Ashworth as Sleestak

The original actors who played Holly and Will in the TV series, Kathy Coleman and Wesley Eure, filmed cameos for the film. However, the final version of the film cut these scenes. Bobb'e J. Thompson, Kiernan Shipka (''uncredited''), Dylan Sprayberry, and Sierra McCormick appeared in a cameo as Tar Pit Kids and Raymond Ochoa as an uncredited boy in a museum.

Production

Production for the film began on March 4, 2008. Only one week's worth of filming was shot using a large-scale soundstage with green screen technology. The rest of filming took place on location in places such as the Dumont Dunes in the Mojave Desert, the La Brea Tar Pits in Hancock Park, and Trona, California.

Marketing

The first trailer was shown during Super Bowl XLIII. Subway Restaurants, which paid to appear in the film and had cross promotions with (appearing on their cups), unveiled the second trailer exclusively on their website. JW Marriott Hotels and Pop Rocks also purchased rights to market with film tie-ins. Syfy aired a marathon of the original series on Memorial Day in 2009 in coordination with the studio to have frequent film clips and an interview with Sid and Marty Krofft. After the film's release, another marathon aired on Chiller on June 6. The majority of the first two seasons were also made available on Hulu. Ahead of the film's release, Universal also released the complete series on DVD; it had previously been released by Rhino Home Video. The entire series is also available via download from Xbox Live. Two different games were released online to promote the film. "Chakker" was available to play on the film's official Web site while "Crystal Adventure" was a free downloadable game for iPhones from Kewlbox. Both Subway and MapQuest hosted an online sweepstakes on their respective Web sites with various movie-related merchandise given away as prizes. Both sweepstakes ran from May 18 through June 7 of 2009. Ferrell also appeared on the season 4 premiere of '' Man vs. Wild'', which aired June 2, 2009, to promote the film.

Music

The score to ''Land of the Lost'' was composed by Michael Giacchino, who recorded his score with an 88-piece ensemble of the Hollywood Studio Symphony and a 35-person choir. On May 10, it was also announced by Dave Mustaine on TheLiveLine that some music from Megadeth would appear in the film. Whether this would be music from the new record was not entirely clear, however during the phone message Mustaine stated that there was new music playing in the background of the message. However parts of the song "The Right to Go Insane", from the 2009 album ''Endgame'', can be heard near the end of the film. In the film, Rick Marshall sings the original ''Land of the Lost'' theme and two other tracks (Tracks 5 and 27) utilize parts of the theme as well., The musical ''A Chorus Line'' plays a part in the story, and Ferrell sings Cher's 1998 dance pop hit " Believe". Varèse Sarabande released the soundtrack album on June 9, 2009 (tracks 30-32 are bonus tracks).

Differences from original series

The film serves as a parody of the original TV series, similar to ''The Brady Bunch Movie'' and '' Starsky & Hutch''. In the original series, the main characters were the father and two children. While the first names remain the same, the film converts the Holly character into an unrelated research assistant to allow for more risque humor because she is the main character's love interest. Will, instead of being a son, is an amusement park operator and survivalist. Rick Marshall is a paleontologist in the film, not a park ranger as in the original series. The film's budget also uses CGI special effects rather than the puppet and stop motion animation effects that defined the original series. While the original Saturday morning show targeted a child audience, the film was intended for an adult audience and includes profanity, sex, drug references, and other adult-oriented material.

Release

On its opening day of June 5, the film was a box office flop by grossing only $7.9 million. The film performed under expectations in its first weekend in theaters, its $19 million opening was far less than the expected $30 million. The film's box office results fell far behind that of the 2009 comedy ''The Hangover'', which opened during the same weekend. The film's opening weekend gross was about two-thirds what Universal reportedly expected to earn. It made $69 million worldwide. In 2014, the ''Los Angeles Times'' listed the film as one of the most expensive box office flops of all time.

Reception

Rotten Tomatoes reports an approval rating of 26% based on 191 reviews, with an average rating of 4.20/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Only loosely based on the original TV series, ''Land of the Lost'' is decidedly less kid-friendly and feels more like a series of inconsistent sketches than a cohesive adventure comedy." On Metacritic the film has a weighted average score of 32 out of 100, based on 32 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C+" on an A+ to F scale.

Owen Gleiberman of ''Entertainment Weekly'' remarked that it "has stray amusing tidbits, but overall it leaves you feeling splattered", Kirk Honeycutt of ''The Hollywood Reporter'' wrote: "Lame sketch comedy, an uninspired performance from Will Ferrell and an overall failure of the imagination turn Brad Silberling's Land of the Lost into a lethargic meander through a wilderness of misfiring gags." ''The Wall Street Journal'' stated that it "isn't worth the celluloid it's printed on". The New York '' Daily News'' called it "a high-concept disaster". ''The Miami Herald

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