Being a True Christian®, I have devoted my life to things that don’t necessarily make a lot of sense. As such, I wistfully continue to hope that Hollywood will one day come out with a decent movie that, even though it may not glorify the Lord, will at least not fling a huge wad of phlegm at His Holy crotch. Naturally, I continue to be disappointed. I had high hopes for this film when a friend of mine who had moved to California (I should have known something was wrong by that decision) highly recommended it. He said the movie was about a group of giant, demon-like animals that suddenly arise on Earth and rip human beings to shreds - to the point that their skin looks like something Christina Aguilera might wear. With a joyous heart and a light step, I immediately thought of the Book of Revelation and bought my ticket. With popcorn and (decaffeinated) coke in hand, I eagerly awaited the angels of the Lord.

I anxiously awaited those horse-like locusts with human heads, women's hair, lion's teeth and scorpion's tails that God had promised for the rapture a full 2,000 years before digital imaging! (Revelation 9:1-10). I longed for the beast with lion’s head and six wings (Revelation 4:7-8). Imagine my disappointment when all I saw was a bunch of laptop-generated reptiles that look like a 1960s Japanese Godzilla on methamphetamine.

As is the case with most things not from Iowa, I soon learned that this movie isn’t based on the Bible at all. Instead, it is just another devil-inspired scientific farce designed to manipulate our children into believing the theory of evolution, the notion that the Earth was created millions of years ago, and the idea that giant animals called “dinosaurs” roamed the Earth centuries before human beings had time to turn them into shoes and briefcases. We know all this is balderdash from the inerrant Holy Bible. We know from Chapter 2 of the Book of Genesis that God created man before He created any beasts (2:18-19). Unless, of course, you prefer the equally inerrant verses found in Chapter 1 where God said He created the beasts before He created man (1:25-26). In any event, the whole process took less than six days so, at most, the beasts were here a few hours before Adam and his mate, not millions of years. Of course, the most disconcerting aspect of this “I think I’m going to build a universe” story is that we have a God who gets so warn out He needs to rest, but I digress.

Once I quickly realized that this film was willfully anti-Bible, I jotted down the names given to these so-called prehistoric beasts. They included such contrivances as “brachiosaurus,” “pachycephalosaurus” and “ankylosaurus” - words with that many vowels are only uttered by men who live in countries that grow olives and catamites. I then checked my Bible (which I always have on hand with my 50-watt “Landover Bible Theater Light”) to see if any of these were actual animals that ever resided on Earth. Since I hadn’t seen anyone in the film dining on any of the creatures, I first checked the lists of unclean beasts and birds. When I didn’t find a single name listed, I checked the list of clean creatures, starting with Mary Magdalene. Not one of those critters was a real animal. The writers just made up names out of thin air. Frankly, given the obvious agenda of this film, I’m surprised we didn’t see a Satanisforus or Luciferlovesus somewhere in the background.

Worse than the Biblical, and hence historical, inaccuracies, the movie actually pokes fun at the Bible and God. Since this series of films was slapped together by a Jew, I at least expected him to get the Old Testament right, his certain damnation for rejecting Jesus notwithstanding. The movie basically involves an evil family that tempts the movie’s “hero” to land on an island of fictitious creatures, much like the devil tempted Eve to eat that fruit. Department store heir, William H. Macy, is appropriately cast as Satan, since he has a face more serpent-like than just about any in Hollywood (outside of Winona Ryder’s busy bedroom). Tea Leoni is miscast. (No need to mention the character; if Leoni is present, she’s been miscast.) Leoni, who has the combined acting talent of Keanu Reeves and a corpse, if indeed the two are distinguishable, is supposed to play Macy’s wife, the Great Whore of Babylon, a role that should have been assigned to her co-star, Laura Dern, who dated Billy Bob Thornton, thus establishing her incontrovertible credentials as both a harlot and chronically myopic. One wonders why Dern is in this movie at all, except that she played a potted plant in the previous two incarnations of this trash and is quite justifiably in desperate need of work - and a good meal.

I would go into more detail about what little plot there is in this movie (with a budget that apparently didn’t allow for an editor), but I fall asleep every time I even think of Sam Neill mincing his way through even his smallest piece of vacuous dialogue. All I have to say is that if so-called dinosaurs were as boring as this movie indicates, it is no wonder the Lord killed them all off by telling the other animals to keep the news about the ark a secret.

- Brother Harry Hardwick

 

 

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