Welcome back to Movie Recaps.
Today I will show you an adventure, sci-fi film from 2009, titled Land of the Lost.
Spoilers ahead!
Watch out and take care.
In a mysterious wild zone, an astronaut desperately calls for help, but his communicator isn't
working.
He believes he has fallen into some kind of tear in time and space, most likely not even
Earth anymore.
A roar in the distance puts fear in him and he begins running, but it's useless: a hungry
t-rex finds him anyway.
Meanwhile on normal Earth, tv host Matt Lauer welcomes to his show his latest guest: pompous
Doctor Rick Marshall.
Rick has been studying "quantunm paleontology", which is based on the theory of time warps
and has taken fifty million dollars of research.
He's even written a book about it, and now he's asking for more funds.
Matt of course finds the idea of parallel dimensions laughable, and he points out every
important scientist in the field calls it nonsense, which angers Rick and makes him
leave the studio.
But he comes back when he hears Matt say he's out of his mind, intending to fight him, only
to be stopped by security.
Three years later, Rick is making a presentation on "tachyons", subatomic particles that move
so fast that they travel backward in time.
He's designed a device, the tachyon amplifier, that should allow them to travel sideways
in time to another dimension where past, present, and future all meet.
Sadly, his audience doesn't care much: it's just a bunch of kids on a class field trip
and they only have silly questions to ask.
Giving talks for kids at a museum is the only job Rick could get after the incident on tv.
But one person does seem interested in his research: doctoral candidate Holly Cantrell,
who visits Rick and tells him he's brilliant.
She thinks he should finish building the amplifier because his theories are right, and to prove
it, she takes out an ancient fossil with an imprint of a modern lighter.
She found it in the desert, surrounded by crystals that radiate tachyon energy, like
the one she's wearing on her necklace.
Rick looks at the fossil, takes out his own lighter, and puts it on the imprint: it fits
perfectly.
This gives him back the hope he had lost.
The next day, Holly comes back to check on him again and finds him waking up from a food
coma.
He stayed up working until very late, but he did it: he finished the tachyon amplifier,
which he built using some household objects, so it has some leftover data from the drive
like silly songs.
He hasn't been brave enough to test it yet though, so Holly takes him to the desert where
she found the fossil.
The problem is, the cave she used to explore has become a tourist attraction, so they must
pay gift shop owner Will Stanton to take them there in his raft.
The cave has been decorated to make it look spooky, but Rick and Holly don't care about
the made-up myths Will is trying to tell them.
There's a strong tachyon reading in his cave, so Rick turns on the amplifier, which falls
into the water when an earthquake suddenly begins.
The waters under them get more aggressive and the raft is pushed to the back of the
cave, which has magically become deeper and glowing.
The trio falls into a water vortex at the end of the ride.
This vortex turns out to be a time warp that takes them to the land of the lost where past,
present, and future collide, just like Rick had theorized.
They're on a big desert surrounded by miscellaneous things that have fallen there, from random
doors to a viking ship.
The only issue is that they've lost the amplifier, so they must find it if they want to return
home.
A sudden noise alerts them of a presence nearby, so they go investigate.
They find two advanced primate creatures about to sacrifice a third, so the trio decides
to cut in to rescue him.
Will tries to scare them off with the flame of his lighter, but the creatures simply grab
it when he accidentally drops it on the ground and run away.
Since she's studied primitive languages, Holly approaches the third creature to show him
they're friends, and they learn his name is Chaka.
Rick tries to check Chaka's wounded ankle, but this makes him freak out and run, so the
trio goes after him.
They end up falling into a hidden sandpit that takes them to an underground cave filled
with bones.
Sentient vines sneak on them from behind and grab them by the waist to hang them on a tree,
so the group begins swinging from side to side to try to reach the trunk.
A t-rex appears on the opposite side and tries to eat them, but because of the swinging,
he misses them and chomps on the vines instead.
This frees the group and makes them fall to the ground, where they immediately start running
away into the jungle, where they stop to take a picture of the t-rex for proof before making
their way into a mountain.
Chaka has crossed a bridge and is trying to destroy it to stop the dinosaur from following
him, so the trio must run extra quickly so they aren't left behind.
They cross to the other side just in time, and when the t-rex sees how narrow the bridge
is, it decides the risk isn't worthy and leaves.
It changes its mind however, when it hears Rick say its brain is the size of a walnut,
so it turns around and jumps over the gap to go after them again.
The group begins running once more and enters a different cave with an entrance too small
for the t-rex to go through, so this time it gives up for good.
Will is sure the dinosaur has been looking specifically at Rick, and Holly decides to
call it Grumpy.
Inside this cave, Chaka finds the skeletons of two humans and a bunch of their stuff,
including a record player, so they decide to camp there for the night.
With Holly acting as his interpreter, Chaka tells them more about his life: he's the prince
of his people and has been the victim of a treacherous plot to steal his throne.
His only crime is to love too much, and he thinks he's been treated too harshly simply
because he's pooped in the village well.
Meanwhile, Will wants to put some boxes in front of the cave entrance to avoid being
found, but Rick reminds him once again that dinosaurs have a brain the size of a walnut.
Suddenly, something hits the cave and makes it shake, and when they go outside to check
what it was, they find a giant walnut the t-rex has thrown at them.
The following morning, Chaka brings them some fruits for breakfast as a sign of friendship,
but they have spiders inside, because that's what he considers food.
The cave begins shaking again when a very bright light appears among the trees outside,
then Rick receives some weird visions of an alien asking him for help.
He accepts this request and runs into the jungle with his group following him closely
until they come across an abandoned temple with weird-looking statues and some kind of
crystal obelisk that has been sending the message to Rick.
Chaka is worried about these statues and tries to warn them of the beings hiding in the dark,
but they can't understand him, so these lizard-like beings take the opportunity to come out and
surround them.
Holly takes off her belt in an attempt to use it as a weapon, and that gives Rick an
idea: he uses the belt buckle to reflect sunlight on the statues and then the obelisk, opening
a portal they enter but the beings can't.
This portal takes them to a pocket dimension where the alien from Rick's vision, Enik,
hides.
He explains the creatures outside are Sleestaks and they are trying to take over the world
by using the power of the crystals.
To defeat them, he needs the tachyon amplifier to unleash the full power of the crystals,
that way he could also send the trio home.
Will doesn't trust this guy, but Rick accepts to help.
The group goes back to the jungle where Rick makes a miniature map of the area to try to
form a plan to find the amplifier.
The first step is using dinosaur urine he's gathered overnight to cover up their human
scent.
Rick showers himself with it twice, but his friends refuse to do it too.
The plan turns out to be pointless though, because Chaka shows up then and asks them
to follow him to some clues he's found.
They return to the desert to an area that Holly images to be the entry point because
it's filled with random things, including their raft.
When an ice-cream truck falls from another time wrap, a bunch of dinosaurs shows up to
feed on the ice-cream man, including Grumpy and his girlfriend, who are a very territorial
species.
This means they smell the urine and decide to go after the group.
The party begins running in different directions, and Grumpy manages to catch Rick, but he frees
himself when his laser pointer gets Grumpy in the eyes and makes him drop him.
After hiding in various buildings and vehicles the dinosaurs keep destroying, Rick hides
behind a big rock and finds a tank of liquid nitrogen, which he picks up and takes to a
catapult that Holly and Will prepare for him.
The tank is shot into the female dinosaur's mouth, making it explode in million pieces
and revealing the amplifier, which had been in her stomach all along.
Before they can reach it though, a little dinosaur tries to grab it, and a pteranodon
comes in and takes it to its nest when hunting the smaller pray.
This makes Rick give up on their search, and Holly is hurt by this decision because she
had thrown her future in science away for following him and his crazy theories.
She, Will, and Chaka go back to the jungle to camp for the night, and Holly translates
a bit more of what Chaka tells them about his life.
He misses his tribe, which is nomadic and lives where food is.
The women serve all the men's needs, and as the prince, Chaka has a harem of his own - he
thinks they're ugly but they make up for it with nice personalities.
Their little chat is interrupted by Rick, who had a lot of time to think and has decided
he won't give up.
He tries to apologize for his attitude with a song on the banjo while a huge mosquito
sucks his blood, which makes him feel tired.
The mosquito ends up dying when Rick passes out on top of it.
The next morning, Rick doesn't notice the giant welt on his back, he just guides the
group to the volcano where the dinosaur nest and the amplifier are.
Very carefully, Rick sneaks among the eggs without touching them and reaches the amplifier,
which has been playing music all along.
When Rick turns it off though, the eggs start hatching, because what has been keeping them
asleep is the music acting as a lullaby.
Rick can't find a way to turn the amplifier back on so he starts singing, and his friends
soon join him - even Chaka, who proves to have a wonderful singing voice.
The baby dinosaurs go back to sleep, and the group manages to escape with the amplifier.
To celebrate their success, they return to the desert and have fun in the pool, where
Chaka shares some fruits with Rick and Will as it is tradition in his village.
These fruits turn out to be opiates, so while the three men wait for the effects to pass,
Holly tries out the amplifier.
It makes another crystal obelisk appear in the middle of the desert, and she enters it
to find a cave inside with dinosaur eggs, so she keeps one.
There is also a hologram with a message from the natives with a warning: Enik is actually
the bad guy and he's trying to get the power of the crystals for himself.
Before Holly can run back to tell her friends though, she's captured by a sleestak.
Meanwhile, the men fall asleep after eating a giant crab that fell in a hot spring and
got boiled.
The following morning, they discover Holly is gone, so Rick sends Chaka on a mission
while he and Will explore the obelisk cave.
There are sleestaks guards around taking a break to shed, so the men steal their shed
skins to put them on and pretend to be sleestaks too.
They follow the creatures to the temple where Holly is in a cage about to be lowered in
lava for having helped Enik, so now Rick and Will know the truth as well.
The sleestaks want to capture them too, so Rick jumps on Holly's cage and begins swinging
it from side to side to hit each creature and push them into the lava.
The two of them jump out of the cage before it falls and they kiss, then Holly tells them
to hurry up and leave before Enik finds them.
There's a little problem though: they had already sent Chaka to get him.
Enik appears then with an army of sleestaks he's mind-controlling with a crystal of his
own and steals the amplifier before making Grumpy appear to take care of them.
Rick decides he mustn't run anymore, so after sending Holly away for her own safety, he
confronts the t-rex.
He tries to use some of the fireworks Will had in his pocket, but they don't work, so
he throws them away together with his lighter, which creates the fossil Holly found.
Next, he uses a staff the sleestak priest had been holding to try a pole vault, but
Grumpy simply swallows him when he's in the middle of the air.
Since Rick was his only goal, Grumpy ignores the others and leaves, so now the sleestaks
return to the temple.
Enik enters the obelisk and begins working the amplifier on the crystals while the group
tries to fight off the sleestaks, but there are too many of them.
Suddenly, some powerful help arrives: it's Rick riding on Grumpy, who easily defeats
all the enemies that surround them.
Holly and Will want to know how he's alive, so Rick tells them Grumpy pooped him out,
and when he was making his way out, he dislodged some intestinal blockage.
Grumpy is thankful for that, so the two of them are now friends.
The group enters the obelisk portal and finds Enik, who has already opened a time wrap to
Earth.
Rick jumps on him and wrestles him on the ground, but when Will tries to help, he tilts
the crystal tray and makes one fall, shattering it.
This causes the door to close, so Rick thinks quickly and grabs Holly's crystal necklace
to replace the one that broke.
The door opens again, so Rick and Holly rush towards it to escape, but Enik grabs Will
and prevents him from doing the same.
With the help of Chaka, Will pulls a wrestling move and captures Enik before telling his
friends to leave without him.
He barely had a life back on Earth, so he is staying here with Chaka and starting over.
Holly and Rick enter the portal and return to Earth, right at the entrance of the tourist
cave in the desert.
Meanwhile, Chaka takes Will with him to meet his tribe, where the women he called ugly
are actually very human-like, so Will is happy to befriend them.
A year later, Rick appears on tv again to rub his success on Matt Lauer's face.
He shows everyone a dinosaur egg Holly brought with her, and promotes his new book "Matt
Lauer Can Suck It", which causes Matt to jump on him to punch him.
After the show is over, the egg hatches while resting on the table, and reveals it's not
from a dinosaur: there is a baby sleestak inside.