Sometimes you trust your friends when they tell you that something is worth your time and on other occasions you ask yourself why you bothered listening. Such is the case with 10,000 B.C., a journey into man’s distant past without the benefit of a road map and ice scrapper. What were you expecting from the man that gave us Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow and the Godzilla remake? you might be justified in asking. Not a damn thing, I answer, but like the hero’s journey in 10,000 B.C. you sometimes just go without knowing where you’re going to end up.

Set up like a typical Joseph Campbell arc, but dumber, the movie tells the story (with the soothing narration of Omar Sharif) of D’Leh, (Steven Strait) a young mammoth hunter living in the mountains of somewhere on Earth in the year 10,000. As a child, D’Leh’s father left the tribe on a secret mission, leaving his son under the care of master hunter Tic’Tic (Cliff Curtis). Poor D’Leh has to become the tribe’s new top hunter so that he can battle the reputation of his father’s perceived abandonment and win the girl of his dreams, Evolet (Camilla Belle). But soon, dark riders arrive in their camp and kidnap most of the tribe including Evolet. Now, D’Leh must man up and rescue the girl while defeating an evil empire.

This is one of those reviews where I’m going to be taking things rather literally, exactly as the filmmakers didn’t intend things to go down. First of all, I want to ask the pertinent question: Exactly where the hell is this supposed to take place? Because I have no idea. It starts out in snow covered mountains where winter seems unending. When Evolet and the others are captured, D’Leh and Tic’Tic pursue them crossing their home mountain range, journeying through a precarious rain forest before having to trudge through an unforgiving desert… by foot. Basically given the landscapes, it seems as if they walked in a big circle around the European and African continents rather than going from point A to point B.

Secondly, it’s hard for me to enjoy the hero’s journey when the hero is a whiny little bitch. I know Luke Skywalker did his share of complaining whether it was not going being able to go to Tosche station to pick up some power converters or writing off Han Solo’s ride as “junk,” but D’Leh takes things to a whole other level. Dude, I know they took your girl, but a little respect for the fact that they also took like three-quarters of your tribe as well. I, at times, had visions of the trailer for the upcoming animated film Kung Fu Panda, and was generally surprised when Tic’Tic didn’t slap D’Leh like Homey the Clown.

But seriously, could these bad guys be any more lame? D’Leh’s whining would be hard enough to take, but the fact that the bad guys are a loose collection of non-descript thugs that speak in grunts (as compared to the perfect English of the tribe’s people) makes it worse. Oh, and Roland Emmerich, thanks for beating me over the head with the inference that the head evil dude was from Atlantis I was only able to pick that up on the third go-round. And I’d think that the guy that made Stargate would recognize that the monster pyramid being built by the baddies for some as yet unexplained reason was about 5,000 years ahead of its time.

Okay, so now I’m being petty. Truth of the matter is that 10,000 B.C. is competently made with some very impressive special effects. And I guess as long as you aren’t thinking too hard on all the logical fallacies, you should be able to enjoy yourself without a lot of fuss. And in spite of its faults, there is always a good time to be had in watching primitive man (no matter how cleaned up he may be) whomp the crap out of each other. I, however, for the most part was underwhelmed. I guess Emmerich still needs time to evolve a better blockbuster.