Ah yes, the caveman movie with Ringo Starr, that was a thing, and honestly anything with actors or people that are actually known in the wider sphere of interests… it’s a welcome break from a lot cheap ass dinosaur flicks done with nobodies and with the cash of a ham sandwich, i’ve said this before but i’ll repeat myself since the 30 cents trash is by far the more numerically abudant.
Especially as it’s kind of ambitious for what’s conceptually just another cavemen comedy, as the main appeal is the cast, with Ringo Starr, Dennis Quaid, Barbara Bach, but it’s almost completely recited in “caveman language”, and in some theathers they even gave out a translation phamplet for 30 words in caveman lingo, which isn’t a complete gimmick since there is a sort of caveman dialect-vocabulary that’s recurring through the film, so no subtitles will ever be needed to watch it.
There is a plot of sorts, with Atouk, a caveman a bit too thinky and curious for its tribe, getting kicked out and joining a merry band of outcast cavemen, and with them they basically go on to improve themselves, invent fire, weapons, learn to walk not hunched like a baboon, all that stuff.
I say “of sorts” because this is the kind of movie where the plot is a mere pretext for a series of gags and sketches that what happens could be summed up concisely as “Captain Caveman-ing around”, movies like this live and die on how good the gags stack up… and sadly comedy went extinct more than the dinosaur special effects on display, which are done in stopmotion and are kinda the highlight of the whole thing.
MTS3K fans will recognize also “Vadinho” from The Puma Man, as in there’s Miguel Fuentes as on of the cavemen, an actor that has achieved fame as he’s almost entirely seen and remembered for playing some ethnic stereotype in some really crap ass films, like the also infamous Devil Fish, BUT honestly i’m glad he’s here, there’s a comforting quality to it, i guess.
Given the year you might think it’s a spoof of something… but it’s not, it’s just a slapstick comedy that plays it big on cartoon antics, but it just doesn’t work, due to the either the trite material or even with a good setup they execution and performances just fall flat and dull, i’m not joking when i say i didn’t plain got that some scenes were even supposed to be gags to begin with.
It’s almost like this is done by someone that has a general idea of what comedy is, as a concept, but no factual idea how to actually make it function as such on screen, and the sensibility at play it’s pure frat bullshit, with the idea of roofing women in attempts to fuck them to the classic apex of frat humour, as in the fart on fire. And juvenile stuff like blowing raspberries,
But even aside the dated sensibilities, the main bulk of the comedy is slapstick and it so matter of fact doesn’t work it doesn’t even make one wince, but leaves you uncomfortably silent, waiting for this comedy movie to start making actual jokes, and regretting when it does, for example the “2001 A Space Odissey monolith” sound-alike that play when Atook and his friend Lar accidentally hurt themselves and discover they can actually walk up straight with and not have to be hunched over.
The best joke is the random Korean caveman played by Evan Kim that speaks in normal English, and sadly it’s indirectly indicative of how unfunny this supposed comedy is, and it’s made ironically worse because the performances aren’t the problem, nor is the tone, but the fact most comedy either doesn’t work or it’s dated as hell is an issue, exacerbated by the cast and people involved, with Carl Gottlieb, famous for being the writer of the Jaws series up to Jaws 3, here writing-directing the thing and i feel trying in earnest but to no avail, because it’s a plain dud. Mostly.
I do like the dinosaurs effects (done by Jim Danforth, whom lalso worked with Harryhausen himself for the effects of the original Clash Of The Titan, also released in 1981) , those are a lot of fun and perfect for the silly tone the movie goes for, and i also do find the music to be fitting, the “Little Shop Of Horros”-esque plant too is cute, and Ringo Starr as a caveman is great casting, but ideas, some moments where it all works and good intentions can only get you so far when your comedy doesn’t comedy….but mileage may vary, i’m used to far worse because Italy has strangely a sort of legacy when talking caveman comedy movies, crappy caveman movies, so yeah, this one is poor but it isn’t Andy Luotto’s Grunt!, for best and worst, because that one is actually bad and stupid enough to deserve the cult status it kinda has. (makes note)
Caveman at least has this kinda charming naivetè about it that’s hard to hate it in spite of being pretty poor for a comedy, so it might be worth revisiting IF – and only if – you have some nostalgia for it, otherwise it’s a curious footnote in genre cinema history and not much else, one that had some ideas but couldn’t make them work to save its own life, especially when they would have made for a decent short film, not so much a frigging feature, that’s really pushing it.
Though it wasn’t a box office failure, weirdly enough, it made almost 3 times its budget in the US territories alone, i guess Ringo Starr as a Caveman was enough to entice audiences enough.
I’d recommend just watching the clips where the stop motion dinosaur are present, instead, i especially love the fat ass silly T-Rex, as it leads to the admittedly memorable scene of Athook basically forcefeeding it “weed berries”. The rest of it it best left in the past, i feel.
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