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A long, long, long time ago, prehistoric people apparently spoke English and, as is our custom today, gave big, inspirational speeches to gear up the troops for battle. Yet they were also warriors with names like D'Leh (Steven Strait) and Tic'Tic (Cliff Curtis), who lead an increasingly large army through jungles, deserts, plains and snowy mountains—all of these areas are apparently five minutes from each other—in an effort to save the beautiful Evolet (Camilla Belle) and other community members from some non-English-speaking enemies.
 
Big question: Can co-writer/director Roland Emmerich avoid the unintentional laughs of his "The Day After Tomorrow" and "Godzilla" and bring back the fun of "Independence Day"?
 
Skip it: The actors, looking like they're trying not to crack up, speak in accents that can only be described as "a wild guess about how people used to sound." They're also constantly interrupted by voiceover by Omar Sharif, many moons away from "Lawrence of Arabia," who's forced to slowly, dramatically say things like, "They walked for many days and nights to a faraway land." We'd excuse it all if the well-designed mammoths and other ancient creatures didn't look cut and pasted onto the screen, which doubles the shock/funny factor of scenes like D'Leh instructing a trapped tiger, "Don't eat me when I set you free."
 
Catch it: For big laughs. A "long journey" ends three seconds later, rain is called "waters of the heavens" and one baddie tells Evolet, "I like your spirit, but I will have to break it." We couldn't make this stuff up if we tried.
 
Bottom line: No, "10,000 BC" doesn't know how bad it is. It's not as stupidly serious as "300," and it appears that Emmerich's thought process is something like, "Hey, can you people prove this didn't happen"? The movie may indeed last until the end of time though, kept alive in drinking games and in history and geography classrooms on April Fool's Day.
 
Bonus: Please feel free to send us your answers to the following questions. Why are there so many conversations in "10,000 BC" between people who don't speak the same language? How is it that a stampeding herd of mammoths doesn't step on a single person? And what kind of party would it take to appropriately celebrate the deca-millennium?

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What do you think of ''10,000 B.C.'? Email me: mpais@tribune.com

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