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'10,000 B.C.'

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BY JAN STUART | jan.stuart@newsday.com

March 6, 2008

There was a time, long before the Eisenhower administration, when men were really men, women and children needed to be shielded against conspirators from faraway lands, and any animal that mattered had big tusks.

I'm not convinced that anyone really wants to be reminded about those days (least of all those of us who think they haven't really gone away). The three or four who do are encouraged to untether their mastodons and gallop over to "10,000 B.C.," an epic adventure of such towering testosterone counts and ceaseless tedium, you can almost feel the hair growing on your chest as the bags collect beneath your eyes.

Directed with Cecil B. Demille-ian earnestness by Roland Emmerich, the film tells of a young hunter of noble bearing and Rastafarian-like tresses named D'Leh (pronounced delay, but no relation to the former House majority leader). D'Leh (Steven Strait) wants nothing more than to live in peace with the love of his life, the comely, if cosmetically challenged, Evolet (Camilla Belle). But he has been mandated to carry out the prophecy of the soothsaying sage, Old Mother, who seems to think that he's the guy to lead their oppressed people, the Yagahl, into a place of milk and honey.

D'Leh has his work cut out for him. Large, predatory animals prey upon the Yagahl at inopportune moments. When he and the Yagahl's imminent leader Tic'Tic are not warding off big birds and woolly mammoths, they are chasing after the four-legged demons, slave drivers who have brutally abducted Evolet and her brethren.

Quick as you can say "Apocalypto," D'Leh and company are traipsing across the desert in search of a lost civilization, where Evolet and her fellow captives are slaving over a new pyramid and being pushed off high precipices to appease the gods.

There are no laughs, not a one, unless one counts the involuntary titters that erupt over the stolid narration and the high priests with the long Fu Manchu fingernails. The panoramas swarm with CG-populated masses, but more life emerges from the computer-generated animals than the actor-generated performances. The actors playing the good, beleaguered Yagahl all converse in English, while the black-skinned tribes and forces of evil speak in forked tongues and English subtitles.

10,000 B.C. (PG-13) Beasties and beastly slave drivers plague a post-Ice Age tribe. A low-test "Apocalypto," minus Mel Gibson's gore-mongering and narrative drive. More CG effects and plastic actors than the 80th Annual Academy Awards, but just as pompous and numbing. Where is Jon Stewart when we really need him? Roland Emmerich directs and co-writes. 1:49 (intense action and violence). Area theaters.