This was one of those movies, purposely not screened for the critics in advance of its release last year. The movie industry is a vain, attention-hungry animal, and it never shies from the media spotlight without good reason. Occasionally a movie comes along so hobbled, so hackneyed, screening it for criticism becomes an open solicitation for capital-T, Trouble.

So with 10,000 B.C., which so desperately wants to join the ranks of films like One Million Years B.C. and Prehistoric Women it forgets why such movies sucked, committing the same mistakes. Watching 10,000 B.C. is the cinematic equivalent of sitting trapped behind two-way glass as a retarded child stumbles through a room full of open bear traps. One may shout, "No!" all one wants, to no avail. One will just loose one's voice.

We open on the snowcapped wastes of...somewhere...sometime around 10,015 B.C. We know this because Our Hero, D'Leh, is a child (played by Jacob Renton) at this point. D'Leh's is a supposedly harsh world full ravaged by the last Ice Age, not that anyone in D'Leh's tribe wears protective clothing or displays the least bit of discomfort. Tooth decay, frostbite, and misty breath are similarly unknown to these subarctic hunter-gatherers. It's almost as if their mountain home were a series of carefully-constructed, green-screen sets, dusted with plastic packing peanut shavings blown by an oscillating fan.

The appearance of a blue-eyed girl named Evolet (Camilla Belle) turns D'Leh's environmentally-controlled world upside down. The tribe's Old Mother (Mona Hammond) sees danger right away--not from the girl, but from the "four legged demons" who destroyed her people. Within D'Leh's lifetime they'll destroy tribe as well. So Old Mother prophesies. It's alright, though; As prophetic Apocalypses go, at least this one has a happy ending. After the demonic destruction all will be sunny fun for the people of the glacier, who will "never go hungry again." I'm sure this happy-fun time's contingent upon the completion, by a certain hero, of some variety of quest.

Not that D'Leh's father (Kristian Beazley) sees it that way. As Keeper of the White Spear--the tribe's resident Biggus Dickus--he sees only impending disaster. Leaving in an understandable attempt to head same off, he inadvertently creates trouble at home by leaving D'Leh to grown up "the son of a coward."

Hoping to shuck this reputation, D'Leh (now played by the suitably-hunky Steven Strait) single-handedly kills a bull mammoth on the first annual hunt of his adulthood. Suddenly hot-shit, D'Leh claims the White Spear and "his woman" Evolet...just in time for Old Mother's demons--that is, horsemen--to come riding over the horizon. They kidnap Evolet, along with the bulk of D'Leh's tribe. With his mentor Tic Tic (Cliff Curtis), rival Ka'Rin (Mo Zinal) and designated-young person, Baku (Nathanael Baring) in tow, D'Leh embarks on a hard traveling quest to rescue his bride from slavery and his tribe from starvation. On the way, De'Leh dodges giant birds, bonds with a sabertooth tiger, discovers astral navigation, and forges an inter-tribal alliance with the peoples of what's obviously North Africa. All to oppose recently-arrived refuges from Atlantis, who are quite happy to start afresh on African soil provided there's enough slave labor to build a suitable bunch of pyramids.

Wildly out there, this film fails in its attempt to tell a straight-faced, Cambellian Hero's Journey by taking itself way to seriously...and assuming its audience is just as prehistorically ignorant as its main characters. More When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth than Clan of the Cave Bear, 10,000 B.C.'s director Roland Emmerich wastes plenty of time on sweeping, helicopter landscape shots and computer generated extinct animals. As with Emmerich's other post-Stargate offerings the special effects here are both more interesting and better realized than any human character on screen.

D'Leh (both the German word for "hero" spelled backwards and an example of that subtle, Emmerich touch) is, first and foremost, a flat, one-note sort of "held," with conflicts so easily resolved the audience is always twelve steps ahead of him. The "star" he and Evolet follow is obviously the North Star. We, the audience, could've identified Old Mother's "demons" as marauding horsemen without a prophetic montage...and no matter how close the characters get to death, this bright, happy picture never allows us a moment to doubt that everything will work out in the uber-romantic end, and only the dastardly or unimportant will ever suffer the consequences of this quest. D'Leh and Evolet are well on their way to forming a modern, stone-age family when trouble starts. Despite the Hail Mary pass of a "twist" tacked on to the end of things (ruining--for my money--the only real moment of drama in this "drama") no one should be surprised come this movie's end credits.

Apart from predictability, problems abound. Obviously, Emmerich and partner-in-crime Howard Kloser fundamentally misunderstood the whole concept of a hunter-gatherer society. If one is a hunter-gatherer, one spends most of one's time either hunting, gathering, or following the herd-animals that are one's primary food sources. There'd be no need to wait every year for the mammoths to arrive, no matter how pretty shots of them lumbering over the hills might look on a drawing board. Has our man Roland gone his whole life without seeing a single National Geographic special? I've been to Germany. I know they have cable.

Never one to let science stand in the way of a bad movie, here Emmerich does for anthropology what Stargate did for Egyptology. The fact that man should, by this point, still be fumbling around with cave paintings and fire doesn't deter Emmerich from envisioning whole, tribal societies remarkably similar to the ones we enjoy today. In this, the filmmakers gamble that we are ignorant savages, willing to pony up any spare $ on the promise of prehistoric animals.

To be fair, they are beautifully rendered prehistoric animals. Emmerich retains that special eye for striking imagery that kept us watching Independence Day, despite Will Smith's worst efforts. This is his blessing and his curse, the triumph of style over substance most visible in the writing. No surprise it's the writing that gets me down. Lines like, "Do you see that light? That one. It does not move across the sky like all the others do. That light is like you, in my heart. It will never go away," are enough to convince even the most desperate wordslinger that anyone can write for Hollywood. One need only self-inflict enough blows to the head. Once one forgets little things (like the fact that elephants are matriarchal) and a few big things (like the fact that tropical jungles and glaciers do not usually coexist) then and only then can one claim the white spear of American letters and see one's name on a "blockbuster."

What does it say when a saber-toothed tiger stands out as a film's most interesting character? In two scenes s/he manages to engender hishself to the audience in a way the human characters cannot. They have a bad habit of opening their mouths and reciting the kind of dialogue that begs to be lost in translation. Only the fake Atlantians and prehistoric Africans "enjoy" "native" tongues, while our dirt-smudged, golden-brown hero (and everyone else in his tribe) walks around speaking perfect English. Had D'Leh and Tic-Tic confined themselves to some made-up !Kung san progenator or another it would've spared us speeches that I'm sure it looked good on paper. . .where they should've remained. In the mouths of too-handsome cave-, and bushmen (perfect teeth flashing like white strobe lights in the Serengeti sunshine) lines like, "You speak to the Speartooth?" become unintentional laugh riots.

The filmmaker's disregard for history supplies plenty more laughs. I have no desire to step into the philo-historical cowpie that is the Afrocentrism "debate." Debates are civil, and the bullshit controversy surrounding the relative blackness of ancient Egyptians looks more like a shouting match. Being half-black, I'm half-inclined to skewer this film for once again playing the Atlantis Card. Yes, those "four-legged demons" were Atlantian horsemen, ranging far and wide for the slave laborer necessary to complete their pyramids. Meanwhile, the three-fifths of me that claim Caucasian descent wonder after the fact that all our faux-Atlantians look Mid-Eastern. Am I supposed to be frightened? Am I supposed to despise these swarthy, veil-wearing, theocratic despots simply because their swarthy, veil-wearing, theocratic despots? Are you? Do you?

Serious students of our ancient ancestors need not apply, obviously. Those seeking to enjoy a rip-roaring, prehistoric good time are hereby directed to the nearest available Conan graphic or (better yet) prose novel. Those seeking a type case of the next generation's capital-B, Bad, cinema are hereby flagged down. You've found your exit, boys and girls. The rest of you can just keep on trucking.