The Movie Nut

"Land of the Lost"

Directed by: Brad Silberling Starring: Will Ferrell, Anna Friel, Danny McBride, Jorma Taccone

Rated: PG13 (for adult lan guage, crude behavior) Running Time: 93 minutes Best Suited For: Will Ferrell, Krofft Brothers' fans Least Suited For: everyone else

I suppose, like everything else in life, one can find the pros and cons of juvenile humor, of paying good money to watch juvenile behavior up there on the silver screen.

I suppose some people might even view the Marx Brothers' antics as juvenile, although I think otherwise. The Stooges, yes; the Brothers Marx—comedic brilliance. The difference, I suspect, is in the eye of the beholder.

While I would stop short of catapulting Will Ferrell into the realm of comedic brilliance (I mean, this is the man who made "Step Brothers" and "Blades of Glory" and "Kicking & Screaming"), I will admit, finally, that with the right material, even I can sit through a Will Ferrell flick for all the right reasons.

Fortunately for those of us who occasionally have to endure a Will Ferrell movie, "Land of the Lost" appears a near-perfect host for Ferrell's suspiciously lucrative talents. An insanely implausible concept, decent repartee (especially with co-star Danny McBride) and an impressive visual realm—dinosaurs and cavemen are scattered alongside Big Boy burger stands, ice cream trucks and flying saucers—help concoct a surrealistic farce that's both inventive and occasionally tearinducingly funny.

Dr. Rick Marshall (Ferrell) builds a machine that transports him, his love-struck assistant (Friel) and a redneck lunatic/accidental tourist (McBride) through a time-space vortex— and spits them out in, well, the Land of the Lost.

Once there, of course, the trio must find their way back home, mostly so the pretentious Dr. Marshall can take the credit for his discovery. Loosely based on Sid and Marty Krofft's 1970s trippy-kiddy phenom of the same name, "Land of the Lost" re-creates the adventure, and with far better special effects. I never saw "Land of the Lost," found viewing a few snippets dismal and unappealing, and realize that there are many otherwise serious, normal adults who'll take me to task for such an opinion. Apparently the show has a cult following of quite some ferocity.

I suspect the film will likely generate its own following as well. As bumbling, crudish humor goes, it's superb. Not overboard, but just enough. (The recent "Superbad" used this same formula to success.) Not quite "bodily fluids" humor, but again, just enough.

In one scene, Dr. Marshall pours dinosaur urine over himself in an attempt to render his own scent imperceptible to the hungry beasts. Admittedly, a scene with dinosaur urine (and Will Ferrell) could go in many, many directions, most of them crude and boorish. And, lets face it, one finds very few dinosaur urine scenes in Shakespeare. It's not for everyone.

However, Ferrell pulls it off with bland understatement and the results are rolling-on-the floor funny.

Sometimes in comedy (as in marriage and, one might suppose, barroom brawls) the less said the better. "Land of the Lost" works because most of the sight gags work as well—not so much "in your face" slapstick as "someone thought of that?"

And the decently crafted bickering among the intrepid trio completes the film, definitely a cut above your average Ferrell comedy.

Perhaps vaudeville isn't dead after all.