Land of the Lost

Directed by Brad Silberling

(PG-13)

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A scientist gets lost in an alternate universe.

Land of the Lost “isn’t worth the celluloid it’s printed on,” said Joe Morgenstern in The Wall Street Journal. This big-budget spinoff of the 1970s kids’ show turns out to be nothing more than a “dramatically, thematically, and artistically bankrupt comic fantasy.” Will Ferrell plays Dr. Rick Marshall, a scientist who opens a portal to a land where past, present, and future co-exist. Director Brad Silberling borrows the premise from the original series, but “settles for pitifully little in the way of a plot, characterization, or coherence.” The movie is just a parade of visual gags and special effects, said Brian Lowry in Variety. Even those exist strictly for their own sake, rather than to service an actual plot. Ferrell and the rest of the cast, forced to carry the film, too often simply seem “adrift amid the mayhem.” You keep waiting for it to get better, but it never does, said Joe Neumaier in the New York Daily News. Chalk up Land of the Lost as another expensive Hollywood “high-concept disaster.”