I wasn’t expecting much from Land of the Lost and I surely didn’t get it for two reasons – lack of empathy and context.
Lack of empathy for lead character
The movie starts out with Will Ferrell’s character, Rick Marshall, being laughed out of the Today Show studio by Matt Lauer. His crazy scientific theories then get him laughed out of the scientific community until he’s teaching science at an elementary school. He’s a laughing stock which makes it difficult to empathises with him. Even his scientific theories look crazy to us.
One of the tenants of screenwriting is to create empathy with the protagonist. The screenwriting guru, Michael Hauge, has a short list of ways to create that empathy. One of those is to make them intelligent. Rick Marshall certainly isn’t that, he’s the butt of every one’s jokes. The physical fight he gets in with Matt Lauer only lends to him being out of touch.
Lack of context
Without empathy for the protagonist we’re kind of lost, and not in a good way. Instead of trying to counter that the movie drops us into the actually Land of the Lost that has no context at all. There are dinosaurs, strange monkey creatures, ice cream trucks, hotel pools, etc. There is no law and order, no rules. Not even the dinosaurs have any context as apparently here they can understand the English language.
A skit gone too long
There are some funny parts but it all happens in this land of no context and around a protagonist we don’t empathises with. It makes the jokes a little less funny and makes the whole thing little more than a skit. And like a lot of skits on Saturday Night Live, it goes too long – more than an hour and a half too long.