Now Over 5500 Reviews and (near) Daily Updates!

WELCOME! Use the search engines on this site (or your own off-site engine of choice) to gain easy access to the complete MAKSQUIBS Archive; more than 5500 posts and counting. (New posts added every day or so.)

You can check on all our titles by typing the Title, Director, Actor or 'Keyword' you're looking for in the Search Engine of your choice (include the phrase MAKSQUIBS) or just use the BLOGSPOT.com Search Box at the top left corner of the page.

Feel free to place comments directly on any of the film posts and to test your film knowledge with the CONTESTS scattered here & there. (Hey! No Googling allowed. They're pretty easy.)

Send E-mails to MAKSQUIBS@yahoo.com . (Let us know if the TRANSLATE WIDGET works!) Or use the Profile Page or Comments link for contact.

Thanks for stopping by.

Saturday, June 14, 2014

QUEST FOR FIRE (1982)

Jean-Jacques Annaud’s prehistoric fable is a self-conscious elaboration on Stanley Kubrick’s famous prologue from 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY/’68. In the earlier film, a prehistoric donnybrook between a couple of prehistoric tribes leads to a prehistoric intellectual leap: the first prehistoric mallet! Used not for good (like beating a tattoo on a hollow log), but for amplified power as a lethal weapon! Ah, progress. Here, a trio of our early before-fathers are sent off to bring back a fresh source of fire. It’s a dangerous journey, with a motley, not to say unfriendly!, assortment of homo-sapiens, Neanderthals, & missing link types they must battle along the way. And keep an eye out for all the hungry beasts, extant & extinct! Entertaining on its own terms, it’s over-extended compared to Kubrick’s two-reel quick-step; and Annaud’s filmmaking technique keeps coming up short, missing crucial shots to help link the action together. Worse, the story never makes good on its implied mission. Instead, the eureka moment shows one member of our intrepid band of three, along with the noisome female they rescued on the way, closely observing a prehistoric fire-maker who uses the spinning stick method. No actual discovery of anything. (Well, one lucky traveler does discover the missionary position.) Kind of anti-climatic. Fortunately, Annaud isn’t hopelessly serious about it all and lightens things up with various prehistoric laughs, usually involving someone else in pain or someone else having sex. Gags that haven’t aged a day . . . or a few thousand millennium.

DOUBLE-BILL: The first twenty minutes of 2001.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Claude Agostini’s lensing rarely captures the wonder Annuad is going for, but Philippe Sarde’s pseudo avant-garde score, heavily influenced by some of the wilder classical music in 2001, is often very effective in its attention-getting way.

No comments: