On paper this should have been a monster comedy (no pun intended, dinosaur fans).
Take a director (Brad Silberling), with visual flair and a background in Fx movies (Casper / Lemony Sniketts)...combine it with a big budget...a top comedy actor (Will Ferrell) looking for a high concept effects funride...give them able support with starlet Anna Friel and newbie comedian, Danny Mcbride...and then, as a sure thing, base it on a beloved hit American TV show. And thats how you make a hit movie!
Wrong. Too many cooks spoiling the broth on this one as it smacks of studio interference, and misjudged artistic decisions all over. The tone of the thing is all over the place for one, veering from crass (yey) tits and arse gags to pre-pubesent slapstick. I think Ferrell and Mcbride wanted to make one film while the studio aimed for the child market. Ferrells performance is inconsistant anyway; one minute a intelligent and heroic professor...the next a brailess pleb with no common sense.
Silberling aims for a parallel world that has a heightened reality to it...but can't keep the look consistent. On the one hand are the beautiful location shot desert scenes, complete with Raptors and T-Rex's. There's some amazing photography here. But he undermines it with an abundence of studio bound stage work that is deliberately made to look like it was shot on a set. It's Spielberg's Hook all over again. At least last years Journey To The Centre Of The Earth stuck to it's indoor studio look...not mixing the fantasy world up with a more realistic location shoot.
Unavoidably, the kiddie aspect is enhanced by the alien Sleestacks, the 1950's bug eyed baddies. By this point it's just a pantomime and you'd just wish Ms Friel would strip off for some crude distracting boob jokes.
A faliure, and unfotunately it's not funny enough to compensate for its mistakes. In this age where studios are trying to make more mainstream movies more palletable to a greater demographic...let this be a warning to all who proceed.
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