If Hunter S. Thompson were to publish a report about his travel to a parallel, prehistoric dimension, then State of the Lost might be the most accurate representation possible of its subsequent film adaptation. Directed by Brad Silberling and starring Will Ferrell, this update on the Sid and Marty Krofft television series from the seventies is the strangest, filthiest summer movie I think I've always seen - and it opens against one that features Mike Tyson, a tiger and Zach Galifianakis.
But simply as strangely, it's also damn entertaining, although it's difficult to know whether you should or definitely shouldn't be indoctrinated beforehand to its weirdness. Regardless, Land of the Lost offers a sobering alternative to the pre-packaged and otherwise conventional blockbuster fare offered by studios this summer, even if its charms would ultimately benefit from (if not require) chemical enhancement of some sort to be properly enjoyed. Ferrell plays Dr. Rick Marshall, a disgraced scientist who unexpectedly gets a 2nd opportunity to prove his radical theories on time travel after getting sucked into a space-time vortex with a research assistant named Holly Cantrell (Anna Friel) and a huckster tour guide named Will (Danny McBride). Landing in a parallel, prehistoric dimension, Rick forges a tenuous friendship with a prelate named Chaka (Jorma Taccone) even as he insults or otherwise offends virtually every other living creature, including a foul-tempered Tyrannosaurus Rex. But when Rick, Holly and Will stumble across Enik (John Boylan), an outcast member of a deep race of creatures called Sleestaks, they inadvertently become entangled in a patch to conquer Earth, and must try to keep an interdimensional invasion - even if it means they can never return home again. Most importantly, and in the sake of protecting young, corruptible minds, Land of the Helpless is dead not for children. There's at least one f-bomb, Rick and Will tattle about Sleestaks "tapping that ass," and there are multiple sequences in which our heroes are violently threatened by a Tyrannosaurus - although he is nicknamed Grumpy. Like many, I was fain for, well, a film based upon a kids' tv show, and expected something more like Ferrell's Elf, albeit in a prehistoric setting; instead, I essentially got a Jurassic version of Anchorman, which suggests. if not maturity, necessarily, then at least humor that's decidedly for grown-ups.
Not unlike Anchorman, much of the picture has an improvisational quality, which is certainly uncharacteristic for effects-laden blockbusters, but it distinguishes Land of the Helpless from much if not all of its summer movie competition. Specifically, its set pieces are jumbled together, its CGI wildly inconsistent and its story structure virtually incomprehensible, at least once you realize that transactions of screen time have passed without anything in particular happening. But at the same time, you do get to actively realize that, and what the film possesses in spades is a certain form of fearless, seat-of-the-pants ambition that doesn't always win but generally distracts you from the fact that it's failing. A centerpiece sequence in which Rick, Will and Chaka share a hallucinatory bond after ingesting psychedelic produce counts as one of the riskiest scenes ever shoved into a picture of this kind, but its distance and its pointlessness almost dares you to acknowledge that it existed but to supply enough off-screen time for Holly to get herself in trouble. Meanwhile, the fact that director Silberling punctuates the second with Seals and Crofts' "Summer Breeze" - a druggy, AM-radio classic that's a personal favourite of mine - only further suggests that a certain and steady captain is at the helm, even if he's more concerned in reimagining our memories of '70s kids TV than faithfully recreating the shows themselves. Ultimately, while State of the Lost feels like Silberling's most idiosyncratic, and daresay personal film to date (even after the introspective, semi-autobiographical Moonlight Mile), the movie as a whole seems more a natural prolongation of the form of funniness that is Will Ferrell's specialty - namely, the kind of meta-humor in which characters can both have a moment, and step outside themselves to recognize the conventions they're either indulging or inverting. Needless to say there will be folks for whom the film's sense of self-awareness simply proves distasteful, if not offensive. But inspiring fear and loathing may really be what this picture is stressful to do - which is why with or without Hunter S. Thompson, Seals and Crofts and the Sleestaks, it qualifies as the trippiest, weirdest, and all-around most unpredictable movie of the summer so far. Whether that's a good or bad thing may fall downward to how you choose your epic adventures - carefully constructed or cobbled together on the fly - but as the cradle of the gonzo blockbuster, Land of the Helpless is if nothing else an interesting situation to visit.
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