Two things are for certain in watching Land of the Lost and one is that Matt Lauer has a tremendous gift for self-parody. Two segments with the Today show host bookend the film; the now infamous clip from the trailer and a follow-up clip with the vindicated Rick Marshall (Will Ferrell), returned from the lost land vindicated. The second certainty of Land of the Lost is that the makers of the kind of campy, 70s Saturday morning series about a family of explorers, had no idea what they were going to get when they signed the movie rights away. The end result though is a kind of lightweight, effects-laden version of every other Will Ferrell comedy.

In this version of Land of Lost, Rick Marshall is a bumbling, fumbling blowhard that’s been drummed out of academia for his far-out theories concerning time warps. Holly and Will, originally Rick’s daughter and son in the TV series, are now a voluptuous English grad student (Anna Friel) and a slightly sketchy desert entrepreneur that comes along for the ride accidentally (Danny McBride). The actual land of the lost though is still the same as ever. Marshall and gang befriend the primate Cha-Ka, and try to avoid dinosaurs and the reptile men known as Sleestak while trying to find their way home. Naturally, Marshall’s lack of actual expertise puts the team in danger more than the dangers themselves.

In much the same way that Lost in Space, another film based on a cheesy TV series remade into a big budget film, Land of the Lost also suffers from some genre confusion. On the one hand, it’s got the feel of a film trying to reach the younger kids in much the same way the original series did. But on the other end of things, there’s enough adult humour to make many parents think that if they were going to expose their kids to physical groping, masturbation jokes and guys trying to score, they would have went to The Hangover as a family instead.

In fact, I don’t think it was until later when I was thinking about the film that I realized how adult some of the humour was; from Cha-Ka repeatedly making a grab for Holly’s chest to Will’s trying to sell a mug shaped like naked women’s breasts saying, “The perfect woman, two breasts and no head." Now I don’t have a problem with risqué humour, but in context with everything, what’s this film trying to be: is Will Ferrell in a kids’ movie or is this a Will Ferrell movie dressed up in kids’ movie clothes? Outside the context of genre confusion, the film does occasionally have some funny moments, but director Brad Silberling seriously had his work cut out for him.

Now Ferrell can be a tough act to reign in; he tends to act out loud and perform more with the volume of his voice, exaggerated hysterics and various levels of nudity. It’s no different for Rick Marshall who’s as boisterous and hysterical as any Ferrell character this side of his George W. Bush parody. McBride’s perverted sidekick routine feels a little stale, although I think he fairs better than Ferrell. This leaves poor Friel in the middle, trying her best to eek out some kind of character, seemingly unaware that she’s just the straight man for Ferrell and McBride’s occasionally blue antics.

As I said, some of that did work, but in many respects this movie felt like it was going off in too many directions. It’s a modern film with state-of-the-art effects presumably at its disposal, but everything, especially the Sleestak suits, look like they were made in the same 70s workshop that the original TV series’ were. Without any clear direction, Land of the Lost is just another Will Ferrell movie but with special effects and a dinosaur fight. There are so many missed opportunities here, and they’re all circumnavigated with the exception of any opportunity to be rude or crude. This could have, and should have been better. But in the end, I guess it was at least named right.