The Land That Time Forgot (2009)

THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT is another pathetic attempt by The Asylum to cash in on a then-popular Hollywood blockbuster, namely LAND OF THE LOST. This lacklustre cheapie is based on a novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs and has a washed-up Timothy Bottoms playing a character called Captain Burroughs, but otherwise it has nothing to do with the original book, which was filmed really well in Britain in 1974 and stars Doug McClure (one of my favourite childhood movies). This was directed by and stars C. Thomas Howell, who does a terrible job in both respects. Castaways end up on a desert island in the Bermuda Triangle, where they find themselves menaced by a badly-animated CGI T-Rex and some random Nazis. The acting is as poor as the effects work, and it's so interminable that it seems to go on and on and on.

The Land That Time Forgot (2009)* 1/2 (out of 4) The Asylum adapts the famous Edgar Rice Burroughs novel about a group of people who get stranded on an island and soon realize that they're not alone. As with the Burroughs story, there are dinosaurs on this island but an added touch are some Nazis who don't realize that WWII is over. If you've never seen the 1975 version of this then it's best that you start there and leave this one here alone. This film doesn't have too much in common with the previous film or even the Burroughs novel for that matter but instead it's just a cheap excuse for The Asylum to make some cash. While this version is without question a bad movie I'd stop from calling it a horrible one. C. Thomas Howell acts in the film but he also directed it and considering the budget he had to work with I think he did a fine job. I thought the film flowed a lot better than you'd expect and it certainly looks more professional than a lot of the stuff that the studio puts out. Timothy Bottoms also offers up a good performance and the rest of the cast are good enough. With that said, everything else is pretty much a waste but I do think a bigger budget could have helped things. It turns out that the various survivors got on the island after going through the Bermuda Triangle and this includes some U.S. and German soldiers from WWII. I found this here to be an interesting touch and it's really too bad more wasn't done with it. The CGI dinosaurs look incredibly bad and I think it's safe to say that the effects in the 1975 version are much better (even when they weren't that great to begin with). Fans of the novel or the previous film should probably just stay clear of this because there's really not much of a connection.

I couldn't make it past the first 15 minutes - it was that awful. And then I realized it was an Asylum film. Once I realized that, I actually started finding these other reviews funny. It's an Asylum film. They, by their own admission, only produce crap films that they easily recoup costs for because they hardly spend any money producing them, and they use titles from older films or really similar ones that fool people into thinking it's the same story. And this movie isn't really the same story as the real Land That Time Forgot - yeah its got shipwrecks and dinosaurs, but beyond that, there isn't even a story to begin with (or end with).

Hey, it's Timothy Bottoms! And he's not playing George W. Bush! But if I were stuck on an island full of dinosaurs with George W. Bush, he would act exactly like this! Hey, it's C. Thomas Howell! A long damn way from "The Outsiders"! And he looks emaciated! Hey, C.! Have a sandwich! Hey, it's that gal from "One Tree Hill"! She can't act here, either! Hey, it's an Asylum movie! But this time, the story's not so bad! This time the effects are passable! This time the direction is competent! C. Thomas Howell was the director! He still needs a sandwich! Hey, it's better than Will Ferrell's "Land of the Lost"! Hey, slamming my fingers in a drawer is better than Will Ferrell's "Land of the Lost"! Five stars, because the Nazi U-Boat (don't ask) looks pretty cool!