Z/Web

I recently caught a replay of this series on the SciFi Channel and I’m glad I did. My recollection of the cheesy 1970s kids show was fuzzy and influenced by my adult standards of acting and special effects. Yes the original show was cheaply made with bad stop motion dinosaurs and horrible green screen effects, but the heart of the show was some quite brilliant science fiction, especially for a Saturday morning kids show. Extremely ambitious and innovative, and not actually that badly done considering the budget and the available technology. So I was looking forward to the film. I pretty much got what I expected. While I’d be interested in seeing a “serious” Land of the Lost film, this one was done as a comedy, and as such it works. It’s fun, entertaining, and utterly mindless. I like the way they changed things but kept them the same. For instance, instead of a dad and his two kids being lost, it’s a scientist, his colleague, and a stranger: the characters all have the same names as the original ones, giving it a familiar but different vibe. In another terrific move, the producers incorporated the cheesy TV show theme song in the film, but thankfully not as the main score, merely as a comic banjo scene. The film does that with a lot of familiar things from the show: what is old is new again. Of course the dinosaurs and special effects are terrific, and in the end you get what you expect: a silly romp with action set pieces and comic gags. My only real criticism is a minor one: there’s some surprisingly adult humor in the film, which I found odd considering the target audience. Many adults who saw the series as a very young children probably assume they could bring their kids and this has some sexual innuendo, a drug scene, gay jokes, and other inappropriate topics. I think the writers could have been more imaginative in their source for humor. But other than that (and the adult stuff is not that bad), I liked the film. It’s mindless and silly, but you’ll laugh and forget about it.