It’s hard to have anything intelligent to say about a movie when you can’t figure out why it was made in the first place. Land of the Lost is a $100+ million movie based on a Saturday morning TV show that ran for three years in the mid-1970s. The show was produced by Sid and Marty Krofft, who also gave kids of the era “H. R. Pufnstuf” and “Sigmund and the Sea Monsters” (film adaptations of which are also in the works), as well as “Lidsville,” “The Brady Bunch Hour,” and “The Krofft Superstar Hour with the Bay City Rollers.” (MacDonalds commercials featuring Ronald McDonald and the other denizens of Hamburgerland weren’t made by the Kroffts, but they sure look like they were.) If you grew up in that era, I guess you might have some nostalgia for the cheesy cheapness of those shows. Will Ferrell, who stars in the movie and presumably was the 800 pound gorilla behind it, was seven when the show premiered. But as far as I know from friends who consider themselves Kroffts fans, what they enjoy is the surreal aspect of regular people interacting with manic characters in bizarre costumes that don’t even try to be plausible on sets made on a budget that apparently couldn’t afford papier mache. In other words, an expensive Kroffts remake is by definition dead in the water. For the non-fan who won’t be able to discern any subtle references to the show which the writers have worked into the script (I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt), there’s pretty much nothing of any interest here. It consists of ninety minutes of Ferrell, Anna Friel and a slightly-less-unbearable-than-usual Danny McBride running around an “alternate universe” (how they got there isn’t worth the explanation) being chased by CGI dinosaurs and foiling the universal domination plans of some bipedal lizards. The special effects are adequate, the characters utterly uninteresting, and the jokes way too PG-13 to make this suitable for young children. There’s even a joke about how dumb the Polish are, which I thought went out in 70s.

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