On The Big Screen: 'Land of the Lost' loses direction

“Land of the Lost” was the highlight of my Saturday mornings in the mid-1970s. How could it not be? I was 10, and it had dinosaurs in it.

Throw in the Sleestak – that evil race of lizard men who hissed like a malfunctioning air-conditioning unit – and, man oh man, it was the greatest show since “Jonny Quest” (which only occasionally had dinosaurs in it).

Who would have guessed that some 30 years on, this old-fashioned adventure serial would turn into another excuse for Will Ferrell to hop around in his underwear?

Back on Saturday mornings, “Land of the Lost” was the least campy product of brothers Sid and Marty Krofft, whose other shows were comedies starring actors in garish, oversized felt costumes with large googly eyes (“H.R. Pufnstuf,” “Sigmund and the Sea Monsters,” etc.). “Land of the Lost” may have had clunky special effect and may never have quite figured out what to do with its premise of an alternate dimension, but it was stolid in its approach to adventure, and is remembered fondly for it.

That makes “Land of the Lost” exactly the worst Sid & Marty Krofft show to send up as a big-screen spoof, but that is the approach director Brad Silberling and screenwriters Chris Henchy and Dennis McNicholas follow. They take the same “We’re too hip to take this dumb old show seriously, so let’s make fun of it” attitude that worked well with “The Brady Bunch Movie,” so-so with “Starsky and Hutch” and terribly with “The Dukes of Hazzard.” “Land of the Lost” falls somewhere between the last two, closer to “Dukes of Hazzard.”

The filmmakers go a step beyond spoofing the TV show by turning it into a standard Will Ferrell vehicle.

The film’s tone is rooted more in “Anchorman” than in the Krofft brothers’ original concoction. Ferrell turns his character, Dr. Rick Marshall, into another of his egomaniacal lunkheads, an act that was still hilarious three years ago in “Talladega Nights,” but has grown tiresome. Even more predictable than the comedy is the character arc these guys inevitably follow.

In the TV show Rick Marshall was some sort of park ranger who accidentally fell into the Land of the Lost along with his children, Will and Holly. In the movie Marshall is a “quantum paleontologist” actively seeking a rift in the time-space continuum to prove his disgraced theories are true. Holly (Anna Friel of TV’s “Pushing Daisies”) is now Marshall’s sexy research assistant who’s all legs and cleavage. Will (Danny McBride) is a hick survivalist who shows up just to fulfill the theme song: “Marshall, Will and Holly/On a routine expedition.” (Trivia note: The name of Ferrell’s character in “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back,” Marshal Willenholly, springs from those immortal lyrics.)

Once the trio drops into the Land of the Lost, familiar characters from the TV show appear: friendly ape-boy Chaka (Jorma Taccone); pesky Tyrannosaur Grumpy; those ever-hissing Sleestak; and enigmatic talking Sleestak Enik (John Boylan). The plot, which involves a Sleestak invasion of Earth, is standard but could have been exciting if the dumb jokes didn’t get in the way.

“Land of the Lost” is only one hour and 36 minutes long, but it could easily be 15 minutes without the scenes of Ferrell’s meandering ad-libs (“I love show tunes. They tell the story of the human condition”) and a drawn-out sequence where Marshall, Will and Chaka get stoned on a native narcotic plant.

Presumably, that last bit is a salute to the drug references Sid and Marty Krofft sneaked into their shows. Look no further than the titles to “H.R. Pufnstuf” and “Lidsville” for evidence. But drug humor in a movie based on an old kids show, even one made by a couple of impish hippies, comes across as creepy and inappropriate. Even worse is the depiction of Chaka as a little pervert always groping Holly’s breasts. The humor is crude and smutty throughout, and seldom funny.

Silberling has made a pair of wonderful, but underrated family films, “Casper” and “Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events.” “Land of the Lost” might have joined them if the producers (including the Krofft brothers) weren’t so eager for a PG-13 rating.

“Land of the Lost” is a confused movie that tries to fulfill two goals. It wants to be a naughty, gut-busting comedy, but it also wants to be an action-adventure extravaganza. The conflicted agenda is at its worst during a sequence where some poor ice cream salesman drops into the lost dimension and promptly becomes the main course in a dinosaur feeding frenzy. Are we supposed to laugh or scream? I think the audience mostly will cringe at the bad taste.

The model for a “Land of the Lost” should have been Brendan Fraser’s first “Mummy,” an adventure movie with a healthy sense of humor. “Land of the Lost” gets neither right. The adventure is anemic and the humor is sick.

'Land of the Lost'
Star rating: Two stars
Rated: PG-13 for a drug reference, language and crude and sexual content
Running time: 1 hour, 33 minutes
Writers: Chris Henchy and Dennis McNicholas
Director: Brad Silberling