It’s a bad pun to make, but “Land of the Lost” is just that. Caught in an unfunny netherworld between kid-oriented mainstream summer entertainment and a cheap-looking green-screened sort of surreality, “Land of the Lost” might have been a watchable—no—bearable movie had it just embraced one or the other fully.

Instead, what we are left with in this adaptation of the Sid and Marty Krofft Saturday-morning kids’ show (that ran for three seasons in the 1970s) is a half-baked and uninspired lark of a film that will probably please nobody.

The names are the same as the TV program, but the roles are different. Will Ferrell’s Rick Marshall is now a quantum paleontologist (!) who was publicly humiliated for his belief in a parallel universe that he has yet to prove exists. Holly is no longer his daughter—she’s a budding scientist (played by Anna Friel) who believes Marshall is correct and wants to help him find this world. Will is played by Danny McBride, doing a lesser version of his redneck schtick from “Pineapple Express” and HBO’s “Eastbound and Down.”

Through a series of events too ridiculous to spend time relaying here (but not strange enough to be subversive in any way), the trio ends up in this universe where past, present, and future co-exist. Director Brad Silberling apparently felt the premise was too silly to properly set up because he spends barely any time with his characters before dumping them in the CGI landmark-strewn sand dunes that make up this “lost” world. That wouldn’t necessarily be a problem if it weren’t for the fact that it is so underwhelming.

The production design was probably trying to mimic the cheapness of the original’s sets and costumes, but since the movie never commits to a parodic tone and never really goes overboard with its extravagance, it just looks shoddy. A bunch of world landmarks stuck in the sand with a Bob’s Big Boy statue and other 70s icons does not make a convincing alternate reality—it just looks like laziness.

Though it should be noted that the CGI dinosaurs look very convincing—which is odd, since the mysterious race of Sleestaks are obviously men wearing lizard suits. Why they didn’t go with herky-jerky stop-motion dinos to match the cheesy lizard suits is beyond me. Again—no consistency.

Monkey-boy Cha-Ka (Saturday Night Live writer and Lonely Island member Jorma Taccone) is a beloved weirdo from the show, but in the movie he’s turned into an annoying horndog who is responsible for about half of the movie’s unfortunate stable of pee and poo jokes. He’s not the one that drenches Marshall in a big bag of urine, however. Twice Ferrell gets to do that “joke.” “Land of the Lost” is so desperate for laughs that it resorts to this kind of stuff far too often, and it’s pretty beneath everybody.

It could be said that adapting a movie from source material that is more well known for being hokey was a dubious idea in the first place, but that would be too simplistic an approach to laying the blame. With Will Ferrell and Danny McBride in two of the three lead roles, “Land of the Lost” had the potential to be an off-the-wall adventure with a winking, nostalgic tone.

One hint of the “movie that never was” (and the only time I laughed out loud) is a scene where McBride realizes the unusual electronic processing powers of a certain giant crystal. Immediately he starts singing Cher’s “Believe” with Ferrell and their voices ring out with the same vocoder effect. It’s such a random moment of absurdity that it makes me wonder what this screenplay would have been like if the writers (Dennis McNicholas and Chris Henchy) had embraced all the opportunities for a clever spoof.

On the other hand, “Land of the Lost” certainly doesn’t follow the classic blockbuster Hollywood mentality either, because the script is so unfocused and characters so non-existent that there is no forward motion or reason to root for anybody. Maybe when Will Ferrell signed on, the producers heaved a sigh of relief because they spent all their time securing the rights to film the movie and knew they’d spent no time on the script. They probably thought, “Throw Will in with a bunch of Sleestax, Cha-Ka, some dinosaurs, and we got a movie! He’ll just improvise the rest!”

That may explain why “Land of the Lost” very often took me to the verge of laughter.

Tags: 2009, anna, danny, ferrell, film, friel, Land of the Lost, mcbride, movie, movie review, review, will, will ferrell

Click here for my on-camera interview with Seth Rogen.

If you like your comedy without any sugar or cream then you’re at least in the ballpark of people who may appreciate the humor in “Observe and Report,” a comedy that is alternately laugh-out-loud shocking and flat-out baffling. A minor character sums up the film nicely when he says about a joke he was in on, “I thought this was going to be funny, but instead it’s just kind of sad.”

Anyone who’s ever seen director Jody Hill’s first movie “The Foot Fist Way” or his HBO series “East Bound and Down” (both starring Danny McBride, who makes a cameo here) will have a better idea of what to expect from his new Seth Rogen-led film “Observe and Report.”

Hill specializes in a certain type of protagonist—a loud, obnoxious man-child who loves pushing others around, especially those who threaten him. Ronnie Barnhardt (Rogen) fits the bill perfectly. He’s a pill-popping, bipolar mall cop who yearns to be a real policeman, mainly so he can carry a gun. (This is about as far as you can get from that PG movie starring Kevin James.) When a streaker starts flashing the ladies in the parking lot—especially blonde make-up countergirl Brandi (an underused Anna Faris), Ronnie feels like catching him is his ticket to the big leagues.

Other freakish over-the-top types float in and out of Ronnie’s world in the most haphazard of ways. Michael Peña (“Crash,” “World Trade Center”) hangs around in the background with a lisp until he’s called up for one deviously hilarious montage. Thick-spectacled identical twins John and Matt Yuan have a natural, funny charisma, but have little more to do than add scenery. And I’m pretty sure Jesse Plemons (TV’s “Friday Night Lights”) played another, lesser mall cop guy, but he didn’t have much to do either.

Ray Liotta—as menacing an actor as you’ll find—is Detective Harrison. By turns, he is Ronnie’s sworn enemy and greatest inspiration. As Ronnie starts to believe he will inevitably be peers with the policeman, though, Harrison resorts to ugliness as well.

“Observe and Report” is refreshing and frustrating in equal measure. The herky-jerky rhythm of the movie suggests that a lot of subplots and introductions were cut in favor of more “funny” and a slimmer running time. (Even at 82 minutes, it sometimes feels a little long.) There are wild mood swings between so many of the scenes and certain plot points are just dropped altogether.

At the same time, Hill is finding his own voice as an original comedic filmmaker, however spotty he may be. Some of his jokes land with a thud once, and some—like Ronnie proclaiming virtually everyone in the mall as guilty at one time or another—are repeat offenders. But the writer/director is also developing his own signature.

One stylistic constant is his frequent use of jump cuts to accentuate punchlines (if you can even call them that) and get out of scenes as quick as possible. Rather than ease the audience out of some of the more reprehensible humor, Hill prefers to cut while everyone is still digesting what happened. More than once during the screening I attended, I could hear astonished gasps just before the laughter.

Because the movie has such an odd pace and so many uncomfortable moments, the slo-mo music montages (set to musical oddities such as Little River Band’s “Help is on the Way” and a needless cover of Pixies’ “Where is my Mind?”) actually add some welcome familiarity in terms of movie language, which Hill then packs full of the maximum amount of absurdity possible.

Lastly, we come to the formula of “Observe and Report,” which is this: Build a scene up in the most typical way possible and make the audience expect what they usually get. Then, do the exact opposite. Example: Ronnie gets some much-needed consoling from his mother and a shoulder to cry on. This is where the violins come in and Mom is supposed to deliver a few kind words to help her son turn his life around, but when Ronnie asks her what she’s trying to say, she replies, “I don’t know, I’m drunk.”

This formula is also applied to the over-arching plot of the entire film. Nothing works out the way it usually does.

If you’re going to have a formula, at least make it one that willfully flees the convention of other films. Hill is throwing out the rulebook on how to make a satisfying movie, but somehow in the midst of the most politically incorrect humor you’re likely to find at the multiplex—maybe ever—he and Rogen actually do make the pig-headed and stupid Ronnie someone you can empathize with. Ironically, they do it without seeming to care at all.

Epilogue: (SPOILERS LIE AHEAD!) Much has been made of the supposed date-rape scene in “Observe and Report.” Is it really date rape? Does she actually give consent? The answer to both of those questions could go either way depending on how you view it, but here is what I think is important to consider. In the realm of this movie—which is completely absurd—and knowing what we know about these characters, the scene that’s depicted would have gone down exactly the way it did in the film. Brandi may or may not have remembered it, but I guarantee you that she could have cared less either way when she woke up, right or wrong. That’s her character. For the record, I gasped out loud during this scene and it stuck with me far after I left the theater. I’m not surprised people are making a big deal about it now. Frankly, I was surprised the MPAA let them keep it in the cut.

Tags: anna, cop, faris, film, hill, jody, mall, movie, Observe and Report, rating, review, rogen, seth, synopsis