10,000 BC 2008

Critics score:
8 / 100

Reviews provided by RottenTomatoes

Ann Hornaday, Washington Post: One part Joseph Campbell hero quest, one part multi-culti morality tale, one part live-action Flintstones cartoon, 10,000 B.C. is finally every part just plain nuts. Read more

A.O. Scott, New York Times: It's best not to think too hard about anything in 10,000 BC, a sublimely dunderheaded excursion into human prehistory. Read more

Andrea Gronvall, Chicago Reader: Overblown and stupefyingly dull. Read more

Keith Phipps, AV Club: Emmerich knows how to fill the screen with spectacle, but not how to field-marshal it. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: [I] saith to you that I had a strangely good time, and whether that is from laughing at 10,000 B.C. or laughing with it I knoweth not, although I strongly suspect the former. Read more

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: Outrageous and outlandish, Emmerich's 10,000 BC is easy to mock, but it is so cheerfully shameless and terminally silly that you have to admire its effrontery and accept its creator... as a certified crackpot visionary. Read more

Christy Lemire, Associated Press: A mix of vast CGI spectacle and small, silly moments, the prehistoric saga 10,000 BC is an epic in name only. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: Sometimes you have a hankering for a slab of 10,000-year-old cheese. Here it is, on a cracker. Read more

Amy Biancolli, Houston Chronicle: The mammoths are cool. The squealing killer ostriches, perhaps inspired by ancient phorusrhacid fossils, are idiotic but... okay, they're idiotic. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: It made me yearn to see Caveman again. At least that was intentionally funny. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: Barney Rubble had a lot more charisma than anyone involved in this movie. Read more

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: Neither grand enough to be impressive nor antic enough to be charming, the movie settles for bland and frantic, climaxing in a showdown among decadent pyramid builders. Read more

Tom Maurstad, Dallas Morning News: You may be expecting a showcase of cutting-edge visuals -- isn't the appeal of the title the implicit promise of seeing a lost world re-created to presumably dazzling effect? But for the most part, it's just barren landscapes and people in animal skins. Read more

Jan Stuart, Newsday: An epic adventure of such towering testosterone counts and ceaseless tedium, you can almost feel the hair growing on your chest as the bags collect beneath your eyes. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: Yabba-dabba-don't. Read more

Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News: The less said about historical accuracy, the better. Read more

Lou Lumenick, New York Post: While the special effects are top notch... the humans are dull, the dialogue is ridiculous, and anyone expecting a repeat of the action in 300 is going to be sorely disappointed with this bloodless PG-13 adventure. Read more

Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: Where's Raquel Welch in that fur bikini? Read more

Carrie Rickey, Philadelphia Inquirer: Would that Emmerich took as much care with his human characters as with inanimate objects and CGI animals. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: 10,000 B.C. isn't only brain-dead, it's completely dead. It's inert and without a heartbeat. Read more

Stephanie Zacharek, Salon.com: 10,000 BC would be much better if it allowed itself the freedom to be kitsch. Read more

Peter Hartlaub, San Francisco Chronicle: While the movie is completely ridiculous, at least it's fun to think of all the high school students who are going to mistake this movie for an accurate historical record and get F's on their next pop quiz. Read more

Dana Stevens, Slate: Rather than taking the trouble to imagine what early civilization might have been like -- its culture, its language, its warfare, its family life -- the movie simply transposes a banal Hollywood epic into Paleolithic times. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: In the realm of heroic historical loincloth adventures, 10,000 is much less than 300. Read more

Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail: If you thought 300 was silly, think of 10,000 BC as 33.333 times sillier. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: This much-delayed film cries out for consideration for Worst CGI, Most Annoying Narrator, Lamest Dialogue and Dumbest Action Hero. Read more

Ben Kenigsberg, Time Out: Read more

Nigel Floyd, Time Out: Like the lumbering mammoths, it is plodding and dull. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: Even a cameo by Pauly Shore in Encino Man would liven up this bombastic bore. Read more

Todd McCarthy, Variety: Conventional where it should be bold and mild where it should be wild, 10,000 BC reps a missed opportunity to present an imaginative vision of a prehistoric moment. Read more