Roland Emmerich makes movies that are all spectacles and no substance. He’s Michael Bay without the product placements. I’m not tearing him apart, his films are though fluff pieces of popcorn entertainment, but I actually do enjoy most of his films, at least on the low brow entertainment level. "Stargate" was a fun science fiction romp, much like "Independence Day", and seriously is there anything more fun than seeing aliens blow up our civilization? You can add his "Universal Soldier" up there too, but from 1995 on he’s been waning.

Now I know he’s no Scorsese (who is?) but fluff like "Godzilla (1998)", "The Patriot", "Day After Tomorrow", have hurt his rep as a big budge, big returns director. See with these types of films he does, he must make profit otherwise, he’s useless. It’s the nature of making commercial movies; a studio gives you a huge budget and you’re suppose to deliver big returns from teenagers and people looking for some mindless fun. But hey, even with mindless fun we at times draw a line.

Which brings me to his newest film, "10,000 B.C."; it has all of Emmerich’s ingredients: big budget, huge action set pieces, and FX everywhere. But his main weakness and it was never any of his films strong points, is his writing. Sure, he comes up with some fun scenarios, aliens invading, paths to another world, ancient animals, but damn, the writing is so brain dead in "10, 000 B.C.", that a fifth grader would be like, "Oh hell no."

So what’s so bad about the script? Well, the first glowing error is the timeline he uses. The history of the film is everywhere and calling it "10,000 B.C." just adds to the hogwash. Mammoths and Egypt don’t mix. Mammoths died out well prior to Egypt’s start of civilization, let alone helping them out with the building of the pyramids! There’s little things like he domestication of horses, weaponry, killer ostriches, destroy the concept or the premise of the film. It’s just loony.

Outside of mixing up history, the dialogue is deliciously cornball. Oh even more hilarious is the boy and his dog scenes with a very tame Saber-toothed Tiger and the D’Leh, our hero. It’s like He-Man and Battle cat!

All of which leads me to the inevitable question: Did you enjoy it? Tough question, because basically no. Emmerich needs to wikipedia his films to get history correct ("Patriot" had history flubs). But if you can accept it on a late-night HBO viewing with some beers, this film is all Mystery Science 3000 material. It’s so bad it’s good. Just wait for DVD, if interested, because this film is bad, it’s a letdown of a possible cool premise. It’s silly and outrageous (just listen to the main bad guy’s silly deep voice as he talk’s to the heroine-ahaha), but with a few beers, place this next to "Plan 9 from Outer Space".