Land of the Lost is a 2009 comedy-adventure movie directed by Brad Silberling and starring Will Ferrell. It's based on the show with the same name.
Plot[]
Paleontologist Rick Marshall has a low-level job as a school teacher at the La Brea Tar Pits, three years after a disastrous interview with Matt Lauer of Today became a viral video and ruined his career. One day, Doctoral candidate Holly Cantrell tells Marshall that his controversial theories combining time warps and paleontology inspired her. She shows him a fossil with an imprint of a cigarette lighter that he recognizes as his own along with a crystal made into a necklace that gives off strong tachyon energy. She convinces him to finish his tachyon amplifier device and come help her on a routine expedition to a cave where Holly found the fossil, which is in the middle of nowhere.
With gift shop owner Will Stanton, they raft into the cave, where Marshall has detected high levels of tachyons. He activates the tachyon amplifier which triggers an earthquake and opens a time warp into which the raft falls. The group suddenly find themselves in a desert, filled with various items from many eras and without the amplifier. They witness two primate-like men known as Pakuni about to kill a young one of the tribe named Cha-ka and rescue him, who then becomes their friend and guide.
The gang later spend the night in a cave after falling into a feeding territory and chased by a fast, intelligent Tyrannosaurus rex which they call "Grumpy" named after his attitude, who begins to stalk Marshall for saying that he has a walnut-sized brain. The next morning, Marshall receives a telepathic message of a strange creature begging for help before he and his group stumble across ancient ruins.
The group encounter a race of deadly and vicious lizard men called Sleestaks before meeting the same creature who sent Marshall the telepathic message, Enik the Altrusian. He explains that he was exiled by the evil Zarn who is attempting to conquer Earth with his Sleestak minions, but Enik can prevent this if Marshall retrieves the tachyon amplifier.
Later, the group come across a desert where many things from across time end up. They soon encounter Grumpy again as well as many dinosaurs including Compsognathus, Velociraptor and a female Allosaurus. The Allosaurus and Grumpy prepare to fight each other until they suddenly sense Marshall (who had poured dinosaur urine all over himself to mask his scent) and begin to pursue him. After managing to outsmart Grumpy, Marshall reaches Will and Holly before he freezes the Allosaurus to death using a tank of liquid nitrogen which caused her to explode, thus the amplifier is discovered among the remains as it had been eaten by the dinosaur.
Before the group could retrieve the amplifier, it is suddenly snatched up by a Pteranodon and taken away to its nest. The group soon arrive at the nest where Marshall lightly steps through the Pteranodon eggs to retrieve the amplifier. When he reaches it, it stops broadcasting the soundtrack to Marshall's favorite musical A Chorus Line, causing the eggs to hatch. Holly soon realizes that the music was acting as a sort of lullaby to keep the baby Pteranodon asleep. Marshall, Will and Holly shout out "I Hope I Get It" to make the Pteranodon fall asleep, with Cha-ka inexplicably joining in as he displays an impressive singing voice for the first time.
With the amplifier retrieved, Marshall, Will and Cha-ka celebrate their good fortune at a motel. Meanwhile, Holly finds dinosaur eggs and takes one before learning from a recording left by the long-deceased Zarn that Enik had lied to them, revealing that he is the real villain and is actually the one planning to invade Earth. Holly is then captured by the Sleestaks and is brought to the Library of Skulls for execution.
Meanwhile, Marshall and the others realize that Holly is missing and go find her. After he and Will notice a Sleestak mating pair, they disguise themselves as them by wearing their shedded skin and manage to save Holly from being executed. However, Enik, now possessing the amplifier and mind-controlling his Sleestak army, reveals his plan to the group that he is going to use the Sleestaks to overpopulate the world before leaving them to their fate while he opens a portal to Earth.
Marshall is confronted by Grumpy, who arrives to get his revenge on him and takes on the T. rex one-on-one. After Marshall pole vaults into Grumpy's opening mouth, Holly chides the dinosaur for it before she, Will and Cha-ka attempt to fight off the Sleestak army themselves. However, Marshall, revealed to be still alive after removing an intestinal blockage and befriending Grumpy, appears with the dinosaur and the group defeat the Sleestak army together.
Marshall and Grumpy make their peace then depart before the group immediately face Enik. After the crystal link between the Land of the Lost and Earth is destroyed by the group, Enik reveals that the portal will close forever. Thinking fast, Marshall grabs Holly's crystal and inserts it into the port, knowing that the substitute crystal won't hold for long. Will decides that he chooses to stay so that he can live a better life with Cha-ka while holding Enik off, buying enough time for Marshall and Holly to escape back to Earth.
Years later, Marshall again appears on Today with the dinosaur egg Holly brought back to promote his new book Matt Lauer Can Suck It.
In the mid-credits, the egg left behind on the Today set suddenly hatches, revealing it was not a dinosaur egg, but was instead a Sleestak egg. A baby Sleestak appears and hisses as the movie ends.
Dinosaurs & Prehistoric Creatures seen in the movie[]
The most shown dinosaur in the movie is Tyrannosaurus rex. There is some more carnivore species, but almost no herbivores. Pteranodon also makes an appearence, it's not a dinosaur, but a prehistoric flying reptile. The animals seen in the movie are:
- A male Tyrannosaurus rex, nicknamed "Grumpy"
- A female Allosaurus named Big Alice
- Hadrosaur deleted scene but was mentioned by Marshall after he collected it's urine.
- Compsognathus
- Deinonychus
- Pteranodon
- La Brea Tar Pits Life sized Columbian Mammoth “Briefly”
- Cha-Ka, the Australopithecus
Gallery[]
