Lost in the Land of the Lost

The key to each and every Will Ferrell comedy is timing. Not timing as in the performer's sense of when to deliver his line, mind you, but the timing of release dates.

Since Ferrell has dressed the same alter ego in different garb - labeling him Ron Burgundy (Anchorman), Ricky Bobby (Talladega Nights) and now Dr. Rick Marshall - it is important to add some space between his films to avoid box office failure.

In 2008 Ferrell made a rare mistake of releasing Semi-Pro and Step Brothers so close together as to doom the former to commercial failure. Hence, after a brief hiatus, we are inundated with advertising for Land of the Lost, a rambling new product of a formula by now perfected enough to capture Ferrell's pale, flabby, flapping torso exactly the same way for exactly the same degree of laughter.

Perhaps more than any other Ferrell flick, Land of the Lost is obsessed with cataloguing and referencing pop culture ephemera. Matt Lauer is brought out to play the straight man to Ferrell's preening, self-serious Marshall, questioning his claims about "time-warps" and harnessing multi-dimensional energy to solve the energy crisis.

When Ferrell looks directly at the camera and puts on that particular smirk and begins to brag about funding his research with $50 million of taxpayer money, the viewer knows the game is on. The laughs are Pavlovian in nature. One responds not to what is happening on screen - Marshall plugging his book as Lauer seethes - but rather to Ferrell delivering exactly the condescending idiot whom everyone wishes to condescend.

All of Ferrell's buffoons do have talents of some sort. It was much easier to believe Bobby could race cars given the beer-and-boobs atmosphere of NASCAR events than to buy that Marshall, a man who attacks Lauer and eats doughnuts filled with M&M's, can crack the puzzle of modern- day quantum theory.

To somehow inject a slight bit of plausibility to the affair, director Brad Silberling (10 Items or Less) imports an earnest Anna Friel (Pushing Daisies) playing Holly Cantrell, an Oxford student enthralled by Marshall's claims about tachyons and time travel.

Then, Marshall, suddenly inspired, builds a tachyon generator which happens to spit out standards from A Chorus Line when turned on. It is not difficult to foresee the requisite gay show tune jokes that, by edict of the Frat Pack school of comedy, must once again emerge. Apparently, no joke is ever amusing just once. Instead, it must be commented on, prodded, poked and celebrated by every member of the cast to have any effect (as the viewer soon discovers).

Following Ferrell's lead, Danny McBride (Pineapple Express) typecasts himself as a psychotic hillbilly flavor of idiot. His Will Stanton, a blustering, deranged explosives obsessive is, in fact, the exact same character as Cody, the blustering, deranged explosives expert in Tropic Thunder.

Fortunately, Land of the Lost does have a sense of self-awareness. After Marshall and company jump dimensions into a prehistoric time with dinosaurs and aliens, the gags become even more gleefully absurd.

Among other things, Marshall and Stanton enjoy a psychedelic bonding experience with a caveman named Chaka (Jorma Taccone, Role Models) to the strains of Jimi Hendrix, fight off a Tyrannosaurus rex with the ability to be offended by human insults and sing bars of A Chorus Line to assuage a clan of angry infant pterodactyls.

Each joke is cribbed and cobbled together with odd bits of pop. Marshall references the culinary possibilities presented by Iron Chef while discussing whether or not to eat Chaka. A stretch Hummer limousine begins to play Ciara's hit song, "Goodies."

Modern topical comedy, though cursed with a short shelf life, can be informative, pertinent and riotously funny. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have built entire careers around this fact.

Land of the Lost, however, somehow manages to capture the worst of both worlds, aging by the minute with its tired, reference-laden punch lines, while being too dumb to comment on present day America. Sure, the film is mildly funny today. But its jokes will seem alien and odd even before it hits On Demand.

Still, it is far more depressing to see the legitimate talent of Ferrell, so gently displayed in Stranger Than Fiction, be used in dinosaur urine-drinking bits. Likewise, Friel, brilliant in the late, great Pushing Daisies, does little but have her breasts groped by Chaka. You know that a role is underwritten when a primate without a fully developed cerebral cortex gets more punch lines than you.

In case a child ropes you into going to see that chubby tall man that likes to do stupid things, here is how to truly enjoy yourself: Forget about every other movie Ferrell has ever made, laugh at the same pee and dinosaur defecation jokes and accept the nonsense because everyone is in on it. Then, most importantly, forget all about it again before Ferrell inevitably returns as a cocky and smug, yet well-meaning idiot in the summer of 2010.

vmain13@umd.edu

RATING: 1.5 out of 5 Stars