Probably the worst movie I've ever seen

I went to see "10 000 BC" with a couple of my archaeologist friends. It was a must, of course, since it is set in the past. Having seen the earlier films by the same director my hopes were not high. Even so, it was worse than I expected.

The story itself is a bundle of clichés. The main character belong to a tribe of Palaeolithic mammoth hunters. A man who is not especially bright or brave falls in love with a woman. She is robbed by the bad guys and of course he sets out to rescue her with a couple of helpers - a young boy, a brave soldier and a wise old man. On the road (a journe through a most unlikely geography which might or might not be Europe and Africa...) they meet other people (Neolithic tribes) who help them to overcome the bad guys. The only way the scriptwriter has found to motivate the people to act seems to be the fulfilling of some prophecy, which abound. Finally it is revealed that the bad guys are actually the people of the lost Atlantis, ruled by some alien! By this time, at the latest, you realize that 10 000 BC is not a movie set in the past, it is pure fantasy, or some kind of paleo-scifi.

The dialogue is almost non-existent, being replaced by a most annoying narrator. The characters are so thin that you could not care less whether they live or die. Through the two hours of suffering (in part of the audience) the movie seems to try to build towards an epic climax which never comes. In short, the movie did not touch anything in me.

Archaeologically, there were some nice details, like the care with which the material culture of the mammoth hunters and the farmers was portrayed. But if this much money is wasted on producing a film, could not someone have paid the scriptwriter a little more to get a proper plot?