Now, don't get me wrong - this is not a brilliant film. It is a bit silly and the plot was weak, but it delivered enough excitement and good ideas to gloss over these flaws and provide a fine adventure romp that was just the thing for a bank-holiday Monday.
Without giving away any more than you will have already seen in reviews and advertising, the film involves a clan of Mammoth hunters who suffer a raid from slavers who are fulfilling an order for a pyramid building god-king. The hero, of course, has to go and rescue the prisoners as he is in love with one of them, a blue eyed girl. Eventually, and predictably, he triumphs and overthrows the tyranny of the god-king, luckily in a rather exciting way that keeps it above yawn-level.
The special effects were excellent (I was rather worried about how the Mammoths and other prehistoric beasties would appear) and the action exciting. The acting was tolerable. I would certainly recommend it as diversionary entertainment. Buy the DVD when it is cheap and stick it in the player when you get bored.
The plot was your basic, straightforward heroic adventure with nothing that couldn't be predicted. Definitely switch-your-brain-off-and-go-with-the-flow stuff. There were a couple of flaws : the sabretooth (or speartooth, as it is called in this pre-sabre age) doesn't do anything exciting (I was hoping it would attend the climactic battle, but no such luck) and the final battle is rather anti-climactic thanks to an all-too-obvious dare-to-defy-the-gods piece of logic (if only a slave had thought of it years ago....) and nothing really comes of all the talk of prophecy.
Something else that bugged me, although not seriously so, was trying to work out the location of the film : the god-king almost certainly rules Egypt (although one far more desertified than it would have been at this time or even in the Egyptian heyday) but trying to work out where you would find the mountains with Mammoths to the north and jungle to the south (with diatryma - was there an Old World species?) vexes me. Could it be an odd South America instead and their home somewhere in the southern Rockies? It's not that important, just niggling! Although I disagree with some reviewers who felt that the film was racially patronising ('white man liberates black men unable to liberate themselves'), as blacks played a key role in the struggle and the whites were pretty useless overall, I did find the racial make-up of the hunter tribe bizarre - an odd mix of whites, blacks and Siberians (the shaman was perfect), but that's Hollywood for you!
One thing that I really did approve of was in not giving the god-king's origin. It is suggested that he may be from the stars or from a sunken land (Atlantis?) yet, especially given the way he dies, he could be just an entirely mundane human with a good line in public relations. Leaving the truth untold was perfect.
So, not a great film but one able to entertain if you avoid thinking too deeply about it!
