Alright, just hear me out. Will Ferrell hit it big with SNL and has made some true classics such as Elf, Stranger Than Fiction, and Anchorman. While that phase of his career was all great and polished, the style of his sometimes crass and all-time dumb humor hit its pinnacle in the mid and late 2000s and 2010s with films like Step Brothers and Talladega Nights.
Taking characters who were fringe personality types was a masterstroke from Ferrell. He did the same, but on a much larger and disastrous scale, with the adventure comedy Land of the Lost. It was a box office bomb and received only negative reviews from critics but I feel it is still hilarious when you look at it through the right lens.
I still love Will Ferrell’s Land of the Lost despite what the critics say
Will Ferrell has made some truly awful films. I will say that post The Other Guys (with Anchorman 2 being a sort of saving grace), none of the films from him have worked well. I was so excited for his reunion with Mark Wahlberg in Daddy’s Home but the two films were really bad. I’d rather have a The Other Guys sequel.
But his 2009 film Land of the Lost is not as bad as critics at the time made it out to be. Is it Will Ferrell’s best? God, no. Is it leaning toward the best of his filmography or his worst? Mostly, the latter. But, what probably works against it is the $100 million budget and the absolutely terrible CGI that should not have been the result of that budget.
Ferrel continues his signature of playing a fringe character, this time a ‘quantum paleontologist’ who has spent $50 million of taxpayers’ money on studying time warps and becomes the laughing stock of the community after an interview of him goes viral. What follows then is his adventure to the land of the lost through a time warp to prove himself.
There is an arc, there are fun supporting characters (Danny McBride, Anna Friel, Jorma Taccone, and Leonard Nimoy!), and I love the hilarious beef between the annoyingly wrong Will Ferrell and a T-Rex named Grumpy. While the CGI is terrible and all the profanity makes it crass, Land of the Lost is still not Ferrel’s worst. I think that spot goes to Holmes & Watson.
The positioning of Land of the Lost may have been its biggest problem
As I mentioned before, Land of the Lost is a campy and crass parody of some of the best adventure films of all time like Jurassic Park and Indiana Jones. However, it was also an adaptation of a TV series that used to air on NBC in the ‘70s. And the worst part, it was a children’s TV show that aired on Saturday mornings.
It really takes a Will Ferrel to adapt a kids’ show into a $100 million parody of adventure films and that could have been its ultimate doom. The film only earned $68 million against its mammoth budget and received only negative responses with less redeeming qualities (via Box Office Mojo). The cult classic kids’ show really signed a death wish with this adaptation.
The film received a critics’ score of 26% on Rotten Tomatoes, while the audience rated it at 32%. It received seven Golden Raspberry nominations i.e. the Razzies for Worst Picture, Director, Screenplay, and more. It ended up winning Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip-off, or Sequel. However, the film seems to have received a better response over the years (via Reddit).
I still feel the film holds up as a dumb comedy that is in line with some of Will Ferrel’s better films. It may not be as great as his earlier films but it is certainly not as terrible as Eurovision Song Contest or Get Hard. The Matt Lauer bit is still hilarious and his pole vault to Grumpy took me out.
Land of the Lost is available to stream on Hulu.
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