Quest for Fire

Kind of like going to the zoo for two hours. This is an interesting film that almost qualifies as experimental, and I guess must be judged a success, if for no other reason than that it keeps you interested for almost two hours in characters who speak not a word of English, or any other recognizable language, for that matter. I haven't the slightest idea how accurate the depiction of prehistoric life is; it seems suitably grubby and violent, and I'm not sure it matters, either. The highly touted Anthony Burgess Apespeak sounds like any old gibberish to me, but I suppose the chief success here isn't the authenticity of the clothing or the language, or the much-ridiculed scene that depicts the revelation of the Missionary Position, but the fact that you actually care what happens to these "characters" (even if you can't tell them apart half the time) at least a little. The dressed-up lions who play saber toothed tigers look pretty funny, as do the fuzzy elephants who play woolly mammoths. Oh well. The problem is that when you remove intelligent communication, you remove a lot of what is interesting about drama. I like language. Maybe this is melodrama at its purest form. (Maybe this is Method Acting at its purest form.) In any event, for all its brave and noble virtues, I'm not sure I'd want to sit through it again.