B.C. full of B.S.

Few words can describe the feelings of bewilderment and confusion that followed me out of 10,000 B.C. “What the hell was this movie about?” I asked myself and the sizeable group I dragged along with me (sorry, guys). The funny thing is, nobody had an answer.

For a film with a title insinuating a bit of historical significance, 10,000 B.C. has none. It’s almost as if director Roland Emmerich (who also co-wrote) slapped on a title that sounded cool and then wrote without so much as consulting an old history textbook.

From the very beginning when the young D’Leh, the film’s hero, pledges his undying devotion to the blue-eyed Evolet using terms like “many moons,” eyes begin to roll. D’Leh’s tribe lives in the snow-covered mountains. Whereabouts is anybody’s guess—they have dreadlocks and seem to be white and Asian and Arab-looking (Cliff Curtis, who often plays an Arab, is actually Maori).

After half the tribe, including Evolet (Camilla Belle), is kidnapped by “four-legged beasts"—the caveman speak sprinkled throughout serves more as comic relief than anything historically accurate—D’Leh (Steven Strait) must go out in search of his lovely. After all, he must fulfill the prophecy as laid out by the tribe’s spiritual leader, “Old Mother” (Mona Hammond).

So, off goes D’Leh, the mammoth hunter, alongside mentor Tic’Tic (Curtis). They leave their snowy peaks for jungle land and later desert and encounter giant ostrich-like predator birds (WTF?) and a saber-toothed tiger along the way. Oh, and there are domesticated horses (the earliest evidence for which doesn’t come until 4,500 B.C.).

The first real geographic indicator comes when D’Leh and Co. encounter an African tribe, the leader of which conveniently speaks English and serves as translator for not only his tribe, but all the African tribes that join them on their journey to save their people from the “four-legged beasts.”

Throw into the hodgepodge of historical inaccuracies the Egyptian pyramids (which are believed to have been finished almost 8,000 years later) being built with the use of woolly mammoths. Ha.

In the end, that’s the most you can hope for from this flick—to laugh a little.