MY NAME IS SCOTT FOY AND I PAID TO SEE 54

This month marks a new addition to the website that's been in the works for awhile now. If you've enjoyed listening to the Foycasts I've done over at Dread Central (and will continue to do so) then you'll the audio player that's just been added to site. Though there is currently only one piece of audio for you to listen to at this time, expect more to come. I'm toying with the idea of adding an audio edition of me reading that month's Foyeurism for those that I often come across who complain that all that reading makes their brain hurt. They know who they are. A whole bunch of them surfed over to read last month's NEVER BACK DOWN Foyeurism - the most viewed Foyeurism yet, and I thank you for that.

As for this first bit of audio, I dubbed it the Foywonder Audio Experiment, which is precisely what it was. I recorded it back in late January late at night at the TV station I work at using a hand-held voice recorder. It's basically a half-hour of me ranting about the worst television programs on the planet (that I have to run) and then top it off with my spoiler-filled evisceration of the movie UNTRACEABLE. I hope you enjoy it. Like I say at the beginning and the end, it was a total experiment on my part to see what it would sound like to try and record something like this using my voice recorder. I intend future audio recordings to be of higher quality and if I do use the voice recorder again in master control I promise not to hold it so close to my mouth so you won't have to hear me breathing so often. Give it a listen if you've got nothing better to do, preferably after you’ve finished reading this month’s Foyeurism. Here's the link to the new audio player.

CLICK HERE

As for this May's Foyerism, I had said the plan last month was to do one called "Unfinished Business" with spoiler-riffic reviews of several theatrically released stinkers from the past few months that I’ve been sitting on. Then April came and went and along with it two of the year's worst. Since I'd rather not do a super duper mega-sized Foyeurism, I'm just going to divide material up for future installments. Now let's start getting caught up with a little...

 

STALE LEFTOVERS

 

"i love this movie! the best movie ever! thanks for makingg itt," zack loves brittany!, MySpace.com

The opening credits sequence of 2008's PROM NIGHT had me momentarily thinking I'd somehow traveled back in time and was about to watch I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER again for the first time. Then I remembered that movie opened with some ominous hard rock song and this one was kicking off with an American Idol techno cover version of "Time of the Season". That feeling of déjà vu would return during the closing credits when it truly sank in that this name-only remake of PROM NIGHT was actually a rather blatant retread of John Carpenter’s HALLOWEEN.

Let's see; an insane killer escapes from prison years later and immediately begins stalking a particular teenage girl, killing off her friends in the process. Instead of the Halloween holiday it's the night of the senior prom. Instead of Dr. Loomis we have the dedicated cop who arrested the obsessive psycho and now makes protecting the young woman he's come back for his top priority. Sound familiar? Now what if I told you that the finale even has that detective bursting into the girl's second story bedroom just in time to pump multiple bullets into the killer seconds before he would have bludgeoned the young woman to death?

So a sucky to begin with slasher flick born from the success of HALLOWEEN has now become the subject of a name-only remake with a plot that owes more to John Carpenter's classic than the original that road its coattails. Welcome to Hollywood, folks.

Amazingly, even with the bar set so low this new PROM NIGHT still manages to be a vastly inferior product, and a product is all this movie is. How else does one explain the existence of a PG-13 slasher movie - an oxymoron if I ever heard one? Seriously, a PG-13 slasher movie is something that makes about as much sense to me as a G-rated erotic thriller.

100% scare-free piffle (unless being startled by loud noise jump scares constitutes genuine suspense in your book) , so inconsequential, so incompetently clichéd, often playing out more like a bad Lifetime Network "anti-stalking" thriller that was given a half-assed teen slasher movie makeover, that I can't even bring myself to hate on it to the degree many others are simply because it was so inept; undoubtedly one of the year's worst movies, but still more pitiful than contemptuous. I did take solace when the end credits rolled and the first thing I heard teenager behind me exclaim was "What a stoooopid movie!" and most everyone I overheard on the way out was also less than complimentary. That seemed a most appropriate statement considering the whole movie seemed to designed with less interest in trying to scare viewers than it was to get them to feel intellectually superior to the film (an easy accomplishment, by the way) by having characters consistently make the dumbest decision possible in life or death situations in hopes audience members will entertain themselves by talking back to the screen informing the flickering images before them as to how stupid they are. At least that's what I took away from how the audience reacted at the screening I attended. What a stupid movie, indeed. But if you're under the age of 12 or have an IQ of 12 then I'm sure watching this movie was a traumatic experience.

That may also be because at the very least the original PROM NIGHT was fully committed to being the gruesome slasher movie it was meant to be. Being PG-13, this new PROM NIGHT features a madman going around gutting people and slashing their throats with a ghastly knife yet the kills either happen out of view of the camera or are edited to great lengths to avoid showing any actual carnage. The killer's blade even possessed the magical ability to instantly cauterize wounds to ensure the bare minimum of bloodshed. A girl climbs into bed with her boyfriend only to roll him over and find his throat cut yet there's not an ounce of blood anywhere except a tiny bit within the wound itself.

The more I think about it the more I'm convinced the killer had to have been supernatural in nature - or a ninja. A ninja could leave behind bloodless blade victims and taking into account the killer's stealth abilities, the likes of which only a master ninja could possess... Or could it be that he had teleportation skills like the characters in JUMPER? The way he got around unnoticed, even moving bodies around unnoticed - bludgeoned bodies that leave no blood trails, even managing to do so while in the same room as other people, no mere mortal could have pulled this off.

PROM NIGHT's killer is played with acting class intensity by Johnathon Schaech, having clearly taken his marriage to Christina Applegate breaking up so hard that he's begun stalking young blondes that bare a passing resemblance to Kelly Bundy. First looking like a Charlie Manson fanboy, once he escapes jail he'll opt for a simple clean shaven guy in a baseball cap disguise that successfully fools just about everyone. Given his blank expressions, vacant stare, slow reactions, dressed down attire and baseball cap, and short-answer manner of speech, I couldn't help but get this weird vibe that Schaech was pretending to be a psychopathic Forrest Gump. One of the only things that kept me from slipping into a state of bored indifference while watching most of PROM NIGHT was imagining that I was indeed watching Forrest Gump having gone stark raving psycho and begun killing everyone that got in his way until he finally got to his gal Jenny.

Forrest Gump is back and this time... it's personal.
"Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know when you're gonna get it."

Jenny is actually Donna, an 18-year old played by Brittany Snow, a 22-year old who actually looks a bit more mature than 22, which makes it hard to believe she's playing 18 and even more laughable when during the opening flashback we're supposed to buy her as a 15-year old. Fifteen-year old Donna came home to find her family murdered and hid as she watched mom get stabbed to death by her demented ex-science teacher who went from losing his job over his lustful obsession with her to deciding the only way they could ever be together would be for him to kill everyone around her. Apparently, best I could figure from the backstory, after he slaughtered her family and failed to find her in the house he just decided to call it a night and went home where he was promptly arrested. Three years later and Donna now lives with her aunt and uncle in the same town, undergoes therapy, takes the sort of psych drugs Tom Cruise would not approve of, and has occasional flashback nightmares of the fake jump scare variety. Before it’s over Donna will experience enough turn-around-or-open-a-door-and-get-startled-by-someone moments to make a drinking game out of it.

On this evening Donna just wants to forget all those past horrors and have the prom night of her life with her bestest friends, Lisa, a sassy Gabrielle Union clone, and Claire, a bubbly Lindsay Lohan look-a-like. Let us not forget their generi-hunk boyfriends, all three of which look like they were bred in a laboratory run by the CW Network. Off they go to some fancy hotel ballroom for the extravagant high school prom of the multi-million dollar production variety just like the ones most small town schools put on every year.

The original PROM NIGHT's most infamous moment was the newly crowned prom king getting decapitated and his severed head with crown still adorning it sliding down the catwalk in front of the screaming audience. There are no similar money shots this time around thanks to the PG-13 rating and the odd reality that the screenwriter (the same man who gave us THE COVENANT, no less) didn't bother to actually have anything horrific occur at the prom itself. All of the carnage takes place on the third floor in the hotel room the three girls and their boyfriends are sharing and, finally, at Donna's home. Only Hollywood incompetence could result in the making of a horror movie called PROM NIGHT in which the prom is the backdrop and not the actual setting.

Because of this the script has to keep coming up with lame excuses for characters to go upstairs to that room in the middle of their prom celebration. Claire is done in by her need for Midol. Claire's boyfriend is done in by his need to continue fighting with her over her going away to college. Lisa and her boyfriend decide to slip away for a quickie. He'll live; she'll die, done in by the one-two punch of foolishly trying to run down a flight of stairs in high heels and her amazing ability to keep knocking things over to make loud noises at the worst possible moment. Lisa's demise will even involve her ending up on another floor of the hotel that just happens to be undergoing renovations. Thank goodness for that because if there was one thing a movie like PROM NIGHT needed it was a cheap jump scare where someone walking around a blue-lit construction zone got startled by a small flock of birds.

A pair of random hotel employees will also fall victim in order to give the killer someone to kill in between killing characters that matter and staring at Donna from a distance rather than making his move during the half dozen chances he could have done so.

Now keep in mind that the killer had escaped from prison three days earlier but the local authorities were just that evening being notified that an obsessed psychopath is probably heading their way (Lousy burocrats!) and, so it seems, a mass murderer escaping from jail doesn’t make the news around these parts. Upon finding out, Detective Winn, the cop who brought the madman to justice, rushes over to the aunt and uncle's home to personally give them the bad news. They all agree heading straight to the prom to get Donna and put her in protective custody ASAP is the wrong thing to do because god forbid they were to frighten her. Having clearly seen HERO & THE TERROR a thousand times over, the cop knows that his next move should be to go where he thinks the killer will strike and do a whole lot of walking around.

The movie eventually runs out of things not to do at the prom so it’s back to Donna's home for a finale that includes soon-to-be-dead cops on stakeout, a precognitive dream sequence, screams that go unheard by the suddenly deaf adults downstairs, and a climax that pays homage to a certain John Carpenter classic - though minus the resurrection aspect and every other aspect that made it work. Though I will say this remake of HALLOWEEN was still more tolerable than Rob Zombie's.

"0-m-g thiz part wuz s0 scary," S@D IN$!D3 R!GHT BY D@ H3@RT, MySpace.com

Despite all the trauma young Donna has been put through because of this deranged stalker the filmmakers didn't even see fit to give her a triumphant moment against the killer. Nope; she's a helpless victim from start to finish, utterly incapable of defending herself, never given that big moment where she finally stands up for herself and gives the man responsible for her torment his just desserts. The killer is about to kill her, the cops guns him down, she screams as she narrowly rolls out of the way of his falling corpse, and then she jumps up and runs into the cop's arms, and the credits just roll in a most "That's it?" fashion. PROM NIGHT's Donna is quite possibly the wimpiest heroine in recent horror movie memory.

But you know who does get their comeuppance? That bitch Crissy! Who's Crissy? Chrissy's the Paris Hilton of Donna's high school, played by a girl who looks like a 30-year old woman who has had enough plastic surgery on her face and then packed on extra layers of make-up to make herself look like a 20-year old Kristen Chenoweth. A good deal of tension is built around whether or not Crissy or Lisa will win prom queen. That's right; it's not even a fight between Crissy and Donna - it's a feud between a secondary antagonist and a supporting character. Any self-respecting slasher filmmaker would have had this catty rival fall victim to the killer, but not this one. Crissy's undoing comes in learning that Lisa did indeed win prom queen, though it's not exactly the most satisfactory comeuppance for viewers considering we'd just witnessed Lisa getting murdered mere minutes earlier. Regardless...

TAKE THAT CRISSY, YOU STUCK-UP BITCH!

The term "roaming minutes" gets a whole definition in 88 MINUTES as Al Pacino and his trusty cell phone roam all across downtown Seattle in search of a serial killer

See Al Pacino standing and talking on a cell phone!

See Al Pacino walking and talking on a cell phone!

See Al Pacino running and talking on a cell phone!

See Al Pacino sitting and talking on a cell phone!

See Al Pacino driving a car and talking on a cell phone!

See Al Pacino sitting in a chair and talking on a cell phone as he yells at the television screen on which appears the person he's talking to on the cell phone!

See Al Pacino commit man-on-cell phone violence as he destroys not one, but two different cell phones!

See Al Pacino and all those cellular phone thrills you know and love in 88 MINUTES!

In 88 MINUTES, Al Pacino stars as a highly respected Oscar-winning actor who decides to collect an easy paycheck by agreeing to star in a serial killer real-time thriller from the director of FRIED GREEN TOMATOES, the screenwriter of the nonsensical futuristic serial killing monster movie SPLIT SECOND, and the producers of the SHARK ATTACK movies, MANSQUITO, SKELETON MAN, and all that direct-to-DVD crappola on shelves starring the likes of Steven Seagal and Cuba Gooding Jr. And for 108 minutes, audiences are subjected to a consistently awful, mostly uninteresting, only sporadically entertaining in a perversely "How much worse will it get?" sort of way, serial killer thriller that's never anywhere near as tense, lurid, salacious, or outrageously bad enough it needs to be in order to succeed as anything other than one of the worst movies of 2008 and a career embarrassment for Al Pacino. Now would be a good time to mention this one has been sitting on a shelf gathering dust for over a year awaiting a proper release.

Dr. Jack Gramm's testimony led to the conviction of a serial killer dubbed the "Seattle Slayer", a serial killer whose m.o. was to hang women upside down by one leg using a series of pulleys and then slowly slash him. This never made much sense to me but then I'm not a homicidal maniac trying to earn a merit badge in needlessly complex serial killing methodology. Upon being convicted, the killer glared at Dr. Gramm and made the cryptic comments "Tick tock. Tick tock", thus indicating he already had formulated the plan he would put into motion that would compose the basis of the movie - nine years later! Now that's foresight.

Neil McDonough's a good actor but his film roles of late have included playing the Seattle Slasher here, Lindsay Lohan's dad in I KNOW WHO KILLED ME, the bad guy in WALKING TALL, a cop in the remake of THE HITCHER, a supporting role in TIMELINE, and next he'll be seen playing the villainous General Bison in the new guaranteed-to-suck STREET FIGHTER retread. At what point does an actor finally decide enough's enough and fire their agent?

Jump forward nine years to the eve of the Seattle Slasher's execution. A copycat killer has claimed the life of one of Dr. Gramm's students. Then Dr. Gramm gets a phone call telling him he has 88 minutes to live. This will lead him on a wild goose chase, and believe me; the only way this film's plot could be anymore of a wild goose chase would be for it to have involved an actual wild goose.

After receiving the first threatening phone call informing him he has the film's title to live, Al Pacino will walk to the forensic psychology class he teaches, start teaching his class, evacuate the school following a bomb threat, run around a parking garage in pursuit of a student's attacker, take that injured student to the campus police, fill out forms while talking to a suspicious campus policeman, drive to his apartment, drive to other people's apartments, eventually drive back to the school, make and receive countless phone calls, engage in numerous discussions and arguments(including more than one ethics' debate with a student), listen to a disturbing audio recording and then take the time to tell the long sad story behind it, survive several attempts on his life, hijack a taxi cab, and do an incredible amount of power jogging for a man of his age before finally confronting the person behind it all and rarely doing any of it without a cell phone within reaching distance. All of this we’re supposed to believe could be done within a mere 88 minutes. Jack Bauer just called; he said "Bullshit!"

Who could the person assisting the Seattle Slasher in this diabolical plan against Dr. Gramm be? Could it be attractive female Amy Brenneman as his long-time lesbian secretary? Could it be attractive female Leelee Sobieski as one of his students who seems a little eager to please her teacher? Could it be attractive female Debra Kara Unger as the college dean who, since being such a non-character yet is played by a known actress, instantly tips us off that she has to contribute more to the film than a brief cameo? Could it be attractive female Alicia Witt as his often bewildered-looking student teaching assistant with the hots for teacher who also happens to have a psycho ex-con ex-boyfriend who did time in the same prison as the serial killer? Could it even be the sexy one night stand who is introduced the next morning brushing her teeth in the nude while standing on one leg with the other rose all the way up to her head like a ballet dancer?

Not only is Al Pacino surrounded by beautiful women young and old in this film, all of them are attracted to him to some degree. Even his lesbian secretary is so in love with him that she bemoans being a lesbian because, otherwise, they'd be perfect for one another. But then how could any woman resist Pacino with his sculptured goatee, that head of perpetually blow-dried hair that looks like a wig stolen from Nic Cage's dresser, and his running around at all times decked out in his finest Johnny Cash hand-me-downs?

Al Pacino stars in THE STEVEN SEAGAL STORY

On the male side of the spectrum, The OC's Benjamin MacKenzie plays a student who isn't entirely convinced the man on death row is the real killer and constantly challenges his teacher on the subject. Thankfully, the young man is not attracted to Pacino.

Or could it be the mysterious guy in black leather riding a motorcycle that keeps following him everywhere? And no, despite my initial belief, he does not turn out to be Nic Cage in Ghost Rider mode stalking Pacino intent on getting one of his wigs back.

I believe the sheer badness of 88 MINUTES can be summarized by describing one scene in particular that features layers of idiocy. It begins with Pacino and Witt going to his lavish apartment with Alicia Witt.

Idiocy #1: Pacino doesn't hesitate to tell Witt that he has no interest in her sexually because she's too young for him. This seems disingenuous given the woman he bedded the night before didn't look to be that much older than her.

Idiocy #2: The Seattle Slasher is being interviewed live on MSNBC, pleading his innocence and claiming Pacino gave erroneous testimony. Pacino responds by calling into MSNBC and getting into a screaming match with this killer on live television. I don't buy this happening for a minute. Okay, maybe it could happen on Fox News, specifically The O'Reilly Factor, but it wouldn't be a shouting match between a serial killer and criminologist - more like O'Reilly screaming at someone who dared to disagree with him.

Idiocy #3: Pacino opens a package containing a cassette player loaded with an audio recording of his 11-year old baby sister pleading on the phone for her then 28-year old brother to save her from the serial killer breaking into the apartment. Aside from being quite tasteless, this guilt-ridden conscience aspect only begs the question; just how old is Pacino's character supposed to be? Pacino hasn't seen 28 in about three decades. Did they have answering machines back in the early 1970s?

Idiocy #4: There's smoke coming in from under a door. Somehow, someone has gotten into his apartment and set a fire. I think. This part was a tad bewildering.

Idiocy #5: The intercom comes alive with the sound of the doorman yelling at someone who has forced their way in and is heading up the stairs to his apartment. That someone turns out to be Witt's gun-toting, jealous, ex-con, ex-boyfriend. He stands at the door with a gun drawn while she pleads with him to calm down. Never before have I watched a scene in a movie that more begged to have Men at Work's "Who Can it be Now?" playing over it.

Idiocy #6: Street Hawk suddenly appears at the bottom of the stairs behind him and opens fire, killing the boyfriend and nearly getting Witt; Pacino returns fire. One look at this person in leather and a motorcycle helmet and its obvious the person is a female and thus the list of suspects narrows considerably.

Idiocy #7: Cue the fire alarm. The building is evacuated, the second evacuation scene of the film. Pacino, still with a gun in hand, is nice enough to take the time to help a little old lady down the stairs.

Idiocy #8: As soon as they get outside, someone sees him with the gun and screams, "He's got a gun!" Everyone scatters, the camerawork gets confusing, and before you know it, Pacino is diving to the ground, narrowly jumping out of the way of a speeding fire truck coming round the corner. This was easily the biggest laugh of the movie.

Idiocy #9: He and Witt head over to his parked car. Witt pushes unlock on the keychain remote and Pacino immediately tackles her to the ground believing the car was going to explode. It doesn't. They let out a sigh of relief. Then the car explodes.

I'll happily admit that if the rest of the movie had been as gleefully inane as this turn of events 88 MINUTES might have at the very least held some serious camp value amid all the dreck. Instead it settles on being bad in the most basic primal way a bad movie can be. And not just bad writing, but dumb writing. 88 MINUTES is one of those movies that's written to be tricky but does so at the convenience of the writer with little deference paid to plausibility. The killer would have to possess both precognitive and teleportation abilities in order to constantly know where Pacino will go next and at what precise time he'll do so in order to leave him precisely timed messages telling him to how many more minutes he has remaining and be able to slip in and out of these places totally unseen within a split second? It reached the point I wouldn't have been surprised if the killer had been revealed to the monster serial killer from SPLIT SECOND, and given whom the person behind it all turns out to be and why, a 10-foot mutant capable of moving at super speed with a fanged motorcycle helmet for a head might have been more plausible.

The killer is revealed to be student Leelee Sobieski. Why? Because she's actually a 28-year old bisexual junior lawyer who has been secretly moonlighting the last few years as the Seattle Slasher's appeals attorney and fallen so under the spell of the slick serial killer that she helped him hatch this masterplan to gain his freedom. That masterplan (at least I think this is what she had in mind - it makes so little sense any way you cut it: commit copycat murders to plant seeds of doubt about the real killer being in jail, try and pin those murders on Dr. Gramm, and hold two people hostage at the end to force Dr. Gramm to confess on tape that he falsified testimony and that taped confession will then be used to overturn the Seattle Slasher's conviction.

So she co-starred in an Uwe Boll movie... So what? Haven't we all done stuff before just for the money? I'm starring in this piece of crap, aren't I?

Not a million years! No way! No chance! No how! And nobody in the movie is ever even allowed to acknowledge that, hey, this plan these two killers have cooked up could never ever possibly result in the Slasher being freed from death row even if she pulled it off perfectly. Sobieski's character is a lawyer who actually believes this will work and Pacino's character is a brilliant psychologist who is never allowed to say how illogical and impossible this plan is.

As for Debra Kara Unger, how I said she was too recognizable an actress for such a bit part; I guess the producers disagreed and that's why they gave her a role the highlight of which is spending the entire climax hanging upside down by one leg whimpering and screaming the whole time. Pays the bills, I suppose.

88 MINUTES ends with Al Pacino smashing a cell phone after telling off the Seattle Slasher once and for all. One can only imagine what he smashed upon getting off the phone with his agent after seeing the worst movie of his career for the first time.

The most uneventful event movie of the year!

Describing a Roland Emmerich movie as mindless is in of itself a no-brainer. Describing one of his films as lifeless is a bit surprising. Though I've often stated that there should be a guy with a hammer standing next to a keyboard prepared to smack Emmerich's fingers the moment he attempts to type up a new screenplay, Emmerich's brand of mindless tripe generally skirts by on some degree of liveliness - not this time.

Dull from start to finish, Roland Emmerich's APOCALYPTO... I mean 10,000 B.C. - whoops! How could I have made that mistake? Could it be because they're practically the same movie? Toss in a little 300, a little CLAN OF THE CAVE BEAR, a little PATHFINDER, and bits and pieces of about a dozen other similar movies I could name (Even a dash of YOR, HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE!) and you get 10,000 B.C. That complete lack of showing us something we haven't seen before is one of the main reasons why 10,000 B.C. is DOA; that Emmerich fails to even retread such familiar territory without an ounce of joy also helps seal its fate. A plodding misadventure completely lacking the most basic thrills one should get from an adventure flick, especially one with such an exotic setting made on a nine figure budget. Okay, fifteen foot tall man-eating ostriches were something we hadn't seen before. I'll give it that one.

The year is 10,000 B.C. The voice of a narrator guides us through this prehistoric tale, though I don't recall the identity of this narrator's voice being identified. Amazingly, it was not the voice of Hollywood's current go-to narrator voice actor, Morgan Freeman. For all we know the narrator might have been the one-eyed guy from 300 telling the Spartans another story to further pump them up for battle with the Persians. If you think I'm just making a weak 300 joke there, let me just tell you that this movie also boils down to a heroic warrior hurling a spear at a self-proclaimed living god of a fantastical nature standing atop a staircase. Sound familiar?

So it's 10,000 B.C. and New Earth Christians are no doubt crying foul. Don't worry; audiences will also be crying foul. Actually, the sound of deafening silence could be heard throughout the theater I attended, bored into indifference.

Know what else will probably offend the fundamentalists? Finding out that man evolved from Phish. No; not the animal fish - the band Phish. They must have. How else does one explain so many white people with dreadlocks? There hasn't been a film with this many dreadlocks on display since BATTLEFIELD EARTH. Cavedude alone looked like he could be Josh Brolin's Rastafarian kid brother.

NO COUNTRY FOR CAVEMEN

Cavedude... I forget the actor's name; he was the fire-throwing kid in SKY HIGH. He plays a primitive hunter named Kalet or D'leh or Kal-el, something that sounded very Kryptonian. I'll just refer to him as "Cavedude" from this point out. He's our hero; that's all that really matters about him. The only character whose name I can even remember is Evolet, the name of his love interest played by Camille Belle, and I only remember it because Cavedude says and/or yells her name about 10,000 times. To be honest, I've forgotten most of the movie by now so I'm going to wing it.

Cavedude’s tribe has a prophecy. Everyone in this movie has a prophecy. Every new land they go to, every new tribe they meet - everyone has a prophecy. Whether it has to do with the coming of a blue-eyed girl or the one who can speak to the "spear tooths" (sabertooth tigers) or the one that will carry the "Mark of the Hunter", everybody: good guys, allies, bad guys; everyone has some sort of prophecy or legend or something or other that's been foretold that ties into the film's storyline. Yet none of these prophecies make the story the least bit interesting. Camille Belle's character ends up being the subject of two prophecies: the first dealing with Cavedude's tribe and the other the villain's downfall. I'm fairly certain the narrator told us on more than one occasion "this is where the prophecy of the blue-eyed girl begins" and then immediately changed the subject as if even the voiceover narrator was senile and couldn't remember exactly what the prophecy was. I'd akin this to someone repeatedly pulling the crank to rev their lawnmower without getting it fully start.

This hunting tribe of primitive young men with gym rat bodies who looked like they could be starring on "The O.C. BC" is ruled by an old woman known simply as "Old Mother". Technically, the lead hunter carrying "The White Spear" is the tribal leader, but like any movie of this sort there always has to be an old mystic, wizard, witchdoctor, etc. that they look to for guidance. Old Mother fills this role and as the film progresses, Emmerich will cut back to her reacting in some way corresponding with the peril Cavedude at the time. Old Mother exists in an almost constant trance-like state and does appear to actually possess magical powers, which doesn't really make any sense when you think about it. Unless... Could it be that she's actually Old Mother Hubbard? She didn’t live in a shoe though.

Cavedude has the hots for the blue-eyed girl who came to their village as a child after escaping her own village's massacre at the hands of the "four-legged demons", or as non-cave people call them: men on horseback. That little blue-eyed girl grows up to be WHEN A STRANGER CALLS' Camille Belle, who pretty as she might be, doesn't exactly rock the dreadlocks to the same degree that Bo Derek did in 10, nor does she show off enough skin to give 10 MILLION YEARS BC's Raquel Welch a run for her money either. And Miss Belle is still suffering from that in ability to close her mouth all the way that I noted in my WHEN A STRANGER CALLS review. She and Scarlett Johansson should get together and have a pout-off with the winner being granted the ability to fully close their lips.

Cavedude has always had a shadow hanging over him because his dad was once tribal leader until he left one day and never came back. He was always thunk a coward who abandoned his people but the guy's best friend who raised Cavedude knows the real reason was that dad left in search of new lands to find new food to bring back to his people whose food sources were already dwindling. Whatever boy-becoming-a-man-becoming-a-leader plot Emmerich was going for registers a zero on the Richter scale because Cavedude's transition arc from insecure hunter to strong leader is so ineptly handled it lacks any real drama; one moment he appears to be a brave, assured leader and the next we get a scene of him expressing the sort of doubts that were nowhere to be found in the previous scene, and before you know it he's leading an army.

In order to win Evolet's hand and become the tribal leader, Cavedude must be the one to slay the first wooly mammoth of that season's hunt, sort of like winning a merit bad in the Boy Scouts except instead of a badge you get a little white slavery to call your own. Cavedude will slay the mammoth and claim Evolet and the spear but he feels unworthy afterwards because he did so by accident. Competitive sports had yet to be invented so he doesn't understand that scoring a goal on a technicality is still scoring a goal. Before any of this can really be dealt with in a befittingly soap operatic fashion along come the Jun Horde for a little pillaging and enslavement.

HORTON HEARS A WHO GIVES A CRAP!

The standouts amongst the "four-legged demons" will be a Sid Haig clone who looks like he most definitely could not pass a WWE wellness test and a rather swarthy-looking Arabian barbarian who gets all hot and horny after feasting his eyes on a certain agape-jawed dreadlocked cavegirl with the most unnaturally blue eyes since Jessica Alba in FANTASTIC FOUR: RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER. Strangely enough, he's about the only male villain who gets hot and heavy for pretty Evolet and yet he still does not act upon his desire during the long trip back home. A girl that looks like Camille Belle has been captured and all her captors can think about is making her a slave performing manual labor building pyramids; this is where you can tell this movie was made by a gay man. In reality, she'd have been raped repeatedly during the long trip back and most likely made someone's concubine once they got there. Did you see ONE MILLION BC? You didn't see all those cavemen fighting over Raquel Welch because they wanted her to build them a new house, did you?

Cavedude must take to arms, flanked by three of his fellow spear-carrying cro-mags, long distance hiking in pursuit of the captors of their people. Well, the others are out to rescue their people; Cavedude only cares about getting his chick back. They'll venture forth to lands unknown defying geography as we know it. From a seasonal valley of grassy hills to a frozen mountain range to jungle thicket to a rainy desert to a dry desert populated by black tribesman to ancient Egypt on the Nile - all within a few days walking distance of one another. There's really no point complaining about this since we should all know by now that science is to Roland Emmerich's typing fingers what Tina Turner was to Ike Turner's fists.

Along the way Cavedude will have to contend with 15-foot man-eating ostriches, rescue a sabertooth tiger from drowning (no particular reason for doing so other than doing so will play into one of those prophecies later on), and finally gain the confidence to take the White Spear and become the true leader of his tribe even though he never appeared to be lacking this quality in the first place. It's all a spectacle utterly lacking anything remotely spectacular. Take away Emmerich's bloated f/x budget and this movie wouldn't even have past muster as a Sci-Fi Channel original movie.

The introduction of that sabertooth tiger encompasses everything that's wrong with Emmerich's prehistoric snoozer. Given the more fantastical elements he'll introduce during the third act there's really no reason why Cavedude couldn't have taken a sabertooth tiger along with him as a sidekick, sort of a saber-toothed Battle Kat to his He-Caveman. But Emmerich will have none of that. The man who royally screwed up GODZILLA by insisting that his Godzilla be more realistic (no atomic breath, no invulnerability to man's weapon, none of the stuff that makes Godzilla) was seemingly intent on not making 10,000 BC some pulpy epic fantasy, instead very much wanting to make a more realistic big budget slice of ancient man's life that just happens to be so historically inaccurate that it plays like some pulpy epic fantasy made by an uncommitted filmmaker. Before vanishing from the film altogether, the sabertooth that never gets to attack anyone or anything will make one more brief appearance just long enough to convince all the black African tribesmen Cavedude comes upon that he's the prophesized one they've all been waiting for.

Hooray! The white man has come to Africa! Only good things can happen from here on!

Emmerich narrowly avoids entering into blatantly racist territory by outright calling the African tribesman "spear chuckers" even though the film's black warrior tribesmen are repeatedly referred to as the "men with spears". All the white characters also carry spears yet are never described as "men with spears". The black tribesman are also portrayed as having been waiting for a great white hope to arrive and one does so brandishing a large white spear referred to as "The White Spear". Perhaps I'm reading too much into this, perhaps the slightly uncomfortable racial undertones here were intentional, or perhaps Roland Emmerich is just a terrible screenwriter.

If the adventure aspect wasn't lame enough - comic relief time! Cavedude eats a hot pepper offered by one of the African tribesman and its hotness chokes him up. Funny, huh? This scene has convinced me to start a new fast food franchise that'll be like a Taco Bell that specializes in spicy North African cuisine. I'm going to call it MOROCCAN TAMALES and the slogan will be "Our Tamales Are Mo' Rockin!"

Cavedude will soon learn that dear old dad had made his way to this land and taught one of the tribesman to speak their far off native language (English!) making it possible for them to communicate. Dad it'll turn out perished in the same place Evolet and the others have been taken too. After braving the cold, surviving the ostriches, saving the sabertooth, and befriending the blacks, Cavedude makes like Ugg of Arabia and leads his newfound multiracial army through the Sahara faster than Moses led the Hebrews out of it thanks to help from the trusty North Star, thus superseding navigational history by countless thousands of years.

The Justice League of Ancient Sumeria's "Hall of Justice"

When they arrive in ancient Egypt we'll quickly come to see that Emmerich still hasn't gotten STARGATE fully out his system; here tossing in a little von Daniken for the hell of it by revealing the person really responsible for the building of the pyramids was not the Egyptians and their Hebrew slaves, but actually the Quest For Fire All-Star Slave Review doing so under the tyrannical rule of a humanoid alien from Atlantis referred to only as The Almighty. History, why don't you go sit in the corner over there, keep science company, and shut up while the mad German makes his little movie.

Not nearly as effeminate as STARGATE's Ra or 300's Xerxes, 10,000 BC's The Almighty does walk around concealed head-to-toe in dress that I can only describe as looking like a geisha shower curtain. We'll never be allowed a decent look at him outside of a brief glimpse of his still partially obscured head revealing a tall old white guy with white hair, possibly an alien albino or Andy Griffith; we'll never know. Flanking The Almighty at all times are his high priests/personal servants, all of whom look more like they should be worshipping Lo Pan and not an albino in the Egyptian desert.

Good lord. Have I really written this much about this crummy movie? I know that might sound like a strange complaint coming from me, but 10,000 BC was so stuck in the cinematic tar pit that it really doesn't warrant this much effort even to riff on it. I'm tired writing about this movie so I'm going to put this into overdrive.

So the bedridden, blind, pygmy eunuch that the slaves keep stashed away in the floor of their slave quarters who they periodically bring up whenever a dreadlocked white boy sneaks in needing to be told how he fits into a prophecy that'll lead to the downfall of a tall white guy with fu manchu nails living 24/7 dressed like an oriental tablecloth...

Given how easily Cavedude slips in and out the slave quarters it kind of makes you wonder why none of the slaves ever tried escaping. For that matter, given how quickly and easily their slave uprising will topple The Almighty and his forces you kind of have to wonder why they needed to wait for the prophesized dreadlocked white boy to arrive.

Now in case you went to the bathroom and missed the Yoda-in-the-floorboards scene, Evolet will get her own personal meeting with The Almighty so that the entire prophecy can be explained yet again. Long story short, some minor wounds she suffered are in the form of a celestial constellation called "The Mark of the Hunter" which will spell doom for anyone possibly from Atlantis who has reinvented himself as an ancient Egyptian man-god with a thing for pyramid building. Sure enough, that's precisely what follows. Hundreds of multiracial slaves revolt, woolly mammoths that are used to help build the pyramids in ways not entirely dissimilar to their use on The Flintstones stampede all over whip-cracking slave drivers, and the finale of 300 plays out right before our eyes but with a new happy ending in which the hero's spear slays the living god and everyone lives happily ever after. Let freedom ring.

"THIS... IS... PANGEA!"

Amid the jubilation, Evolet will be killed. Don't cry for the little cave cutie with the Bob Marley hair. Mr. Narrator Voice finally gets his lawnmower to rev and informs us that this, at long last, after so many false starts, after teasing us with it since the beginning of the damn movie, is where the prophecy of the blue-eyed girl begins. The prophecy is that Evolet died in Cavedude's arms but back at their village Old Mother's Jedi powers kicked in and she gave her what was left of her dusty old life force to breath life back into her. Evolet springs back to life and the final prophecy of a film filled with more prophecies than a Nostradamus biopic is fulfilled.

Now all Cavedude needs are some seeds from their newfound African friends that they can take back to their village to plant so crops that'll help his people wean themselves off their lust for mammoth meat and everyone lives happily ever after. I leave the theater thinking I probably could have laughed at this debacle if I hadn't been so bored by it.

There's a real story in here somewhere that could have been compelling if Roland Emmerich were the kind of filmmaker capable of telling such a tale with some maturity. There's even a big dumb sword & sandal-style caveman spectacle that could have been made out of this mess if Emmerich hadn't committed himself to trying to channel that maturity he does not possess. No, thank you. Next time leave behind this delusion that you're somehow capable of quality storytelling and just remake YOR, THE HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE like you're destined to. That's my prophecy for you, Mr. Emmerich.

Now if you'll excuse me I'm off to play Grand Theft Auto IV like the rest of the free world.

MY NAME IS SCOTT FOY AND I PAID TO SEE SWORDFISH