Land That Time Forgot, The (2009)

default-featured-image

Land that Time Forgot ReviewReviewed by The Foywonder

Starring C. Thomas Howell, Timothy Bottoms, Lindsey McKeon, Darren Dalton, Stephen Blackheart

Directed by C. Thomas Howell


The Land That Time Forgot is a movie that soon won’t be remembered. There is absolutely nothing at all wrong with this modern adaptation of The Land That Time Forgot other than it being thoroughly uninteresting from start to finish. So forgettable is this Asylum updating of Edgar Rice Burrough’s classic novel that the details were already beginning to fade from my memory even as the film droned on.

People on a boat in the Bermuda Triangle get caught in a bad storm. Mysterious bright light – bam! They all awaken adrift with no working instruments, means of communication, or clue where they are. They spot an island in the distance and soon discover it to be populated by hungry prehistoric dinosaurs and some other castaways seemingly lost in time, including the initially unfriendly crew of a stranded German U-Boat. They struggle to stay alive long enough to get off the island while I struggle to stay awake long enough to finish the movie.

A rather haggard looking C. Thomas Howell (who also directs) periodically attempts to ham it up as a man opining for his much younger and hotter young wife who goes missing along with the boat not long after he leaves her behind going ashore. Timothy “That’s My Bush!” Bottoms manages to be soft-spoken even when yelling and plays the ship’s captain at times as if he were auditioning for a role on a 1970’s Sid & Marty Krofft Saturday Morning series. Lindsey McKeon, formerly of “Saved by the Bell: The New Class”, is there for tight tank top and screaming duty.

It may be based on a classic piece of literature but this version of The Land That Time Forgot feels more like the movie that plot forgot. There obviously wasn’t much of a budget for digital dino action so that meant most of the time would be spent with the zero-dimensional characters sitting around talking about their situation or playing “Gilligan’s Island” constructing thingamajigs out of spare parts and scrap heaps to help them escape. It plays like a movie that could have been geared towards the whole family except for a few fleeting moments of gore and a few unnecessary uses of the f-word. Would probably just bore this kids into a stupor like the rest of us.

The movie ends with C. Thomas Howell potentially trapped forever on an unknown island never to be seen again. If only.

I miss Doug McClure.

1 out of 5

Discuss The Land That Time Forgot in our Dread Central forums!

Share: 
Tags:

Categorized:

Sign up for The Harbinger a Dread Central Newsletter