.: Roberts' Reviews - Movie Reviews :.

Labeled as a Prehistoric Epic, 10,000 B.C. is the latest film brought to us by Roland Emmerich the man behind the big screen spectaculars The Day After Tomorrow, Stargate and Independence Day. Emmerich's name on a movie poster is like having Michael Bay listed as a director. You know that you are going to get something big, loud and worthy of a big screening experience.

Having destroyed most of the earth twice (Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow), almost destroying it again in Stargate and leveling New York in Godzilla, Emmerich stays with what he knows best - destruction. Destruction and completely neglecting any rational, cohesive or even comprehensive storyline. It beings me no joy to report that both streaks are still in tact.

10,000 B.C. would be better titled, Love in the Time of Mammoths. D'Leh is our supposed hero. His tribe has been attacked by a group of barbarians, most of which look like what would happen if Cher and Keith Richards had love children. Most of the tribe is taken prisoner including Evolet (Camilla Belle), the love interest of the young D'Leh who watches from afar as his tribe gets ransacked.

Seeming to care only for his love Evolet, D'Leh and a few surviving tribesmen then start a journey that seemed longer than all the good-bye speeches in Lord of the Rings played in repeat mode. They walk up mountains, in valleys, through deserts, into jungles. I kept expecting the cast of Saturday Night Live to jump out and parody the trek as it was unfolding.

Along the way, they meet other tribes that suffered similar fates at the hands of their intruders and they all band together under the leadership of D'Leh to free their peoples. It felt like it took about 10,000 years before D'Leh and his followers (who all looked like they were wearing costume outtakes from lost Gilligan's Island episodes) finally arrive at the river where the captured thousands of slaves all seem to be building some kind of hotel resort and casino.

It seemed easy for D'Leh to find his Evolet and free all captives. Too easy. But then again, I wasn't complaining. The sooner these two found each other, the sooner the film would be coming to a close and I can't remember staring at my blackberry as often checking the time remaining of a film as I did with this clunker.

There isn't a good thing to be writ about 10,000 B.C. The special effects were sparse and even during the best of scenes - one in which the tribe are running through a herd of giant mammoths - it looked so CGI that I felt less peril and more interested in noticing all the flaws in the attempt.

The acting - bad. The narrator (Omar Sharif) - annoying. The story - boring. The special effects - ho-hum. The result - No Stars.