Primeval (2007)

Submitted by corwin on Thu, 14 Jun 2007 11:37pm

I had seen Primeval on the shelf at my neighborhood Walmart recently and was intrigued. It had a giant croc right on the front. This boded well for a giant crocodile movie. Sadly, I was soon to get mixed messages. The inclusion of Jürgen Prochnow in a movie is often not the best omen. Don't get me wrong, I really like him, but I've also seen him in a number of stinkers. He is always the high point of such projects. But then I saw I was going to be faced with Orlando Jones. While I have definitely enjoyed him in such films as the vastly underrated Evolution, his can be very hit or miss as the comic relief character. To top it all off, the words "Inspired by true events" popped up on my screen. That shook me to my very core (though I need to remember to recomend it as a movie for Dustin's mother), as I couldn't imagine how a movie inspired by a normal crocodile was going to live up to my dreams of an embiggened one.

As it turns out, the true events seem to be the various genocides and civil wars which occur with frightening regularity in Africa. The plights of the various African peoples are definitely worthy topics for discussion and ought to be brought more into the public consciousness through film. Hotel Rwanda, for example, has been highly recomended to me and is on my to-be-watched list. But it is definitely not fodder for an evening's mindless entertainment, which seems to be the niche Primeval is going for. Further, Primeval can't seem to decide what movie it really is. In the space of a few minutes, we go from a rolicking adventure where our motley crew is looking to capture a giant crocodile to what seems to be trying to be a deeply moving piece about the people caught in the middle of an African civil war. The changes are jarring, and kick you right out of the story. Both stories could make for very well done movies, but they really can't be forced together as one.

On the plus side, the croc's CGI was decent most of the time, and they didn't shy away from the old-school horror movie concept of having a kid get eaten pretty early on. That part left me nostalgic for Jaws, and left me disappointed when the cute dog survived the movie. Most of the acting was all right too; Prochnow, of course, was the best of the lot. Unfortunately, none of this could really make up for the movie's jarring multiple personality disorder. I would just start getting into one part or another, and it'd switch tracks drastically within the same scene. Ultimately, I can't give it more than 0.7 Bolls.