The Land That Time Forgot starts late one night out on the open Ocean in the Bermuda Triangle during a raging thunder storm, a small boat with some holidaying tourists is caught up in the storm. Captain Burroughs (Timothy Bottoms) notices a strange bright light up ahead which the boats heads straight for... The next morning & the storm has eased but the engine has broken down & all of the on-board instruments appear broken too, stranded in the middle of the Ocean supposedly miles from anywhere the only hope the passengers have is a mysterious island they spot in the distance. They make it to the island & go ashore where they discover all manner of Dinosaurs & Prehistoric creatures, they also find other stranded humans on the island & together they decide to work together to try & get off the island & back to civilisation...

Directed & starring C. Thomas Howell & produced by the ever awful company The Asylum this is an adaptation of the Edgar Rice Burroughs novel which had already been adapted into the Amicus produced fun adventure monster film The Land That Time Forgot (1975) that starred Doug McClure & quite frankly is ten times the film that this modern update is or ever will be. C. Thomas Howell is no stranger to ripping-off modern classics having already been responsible for War of the Worlds (2005) & The Day the Earth Stopped (2008) which are also both terrible & were also produced by the rip-off kings The Asylum. This is the type of awful low budget rubbish that regularly turns up on the Sci-Fi Channel as a bunch of bland lifeless character's get stranded on an island inhabited by a few Dinosaurs & spend most of the film wandering around talking & trying to get off th island. The zero budget means that the Dinosaurs get very little screen time & the attack scenes are poor, they are very static as someone runs & a T-Rex chases them, that's as exciting & imaginative it gets I'm afraid. Towards the end of the film the surviving character's decide to escape the island on a submarine & has to leave Howell behind but why didn't they just stop the submarine in the water & wait for Howell? Aren't submarines able to stop? The original 1975 film is full of action & adventure & sure the effects are weak by todays standards it's so much more fun & entertaining than this limp & lifeless bore of a film that should be used as a cure for insomnia rather than for entertainment purposes.

The whole production is cheap & shoddy, despite being stranded on an island & fighting off Dinosaurs everyones clothes stay clean & never get ripped, their faces never become dirty & their hair is always perfect & despite being stranded on the island for years some of the character's have perfect teeth & don't seem to need to shave. The CGI computer effects are pretty bad but I will admit they are not as bad as some of the CGI I have seen in films from The Asylum although that's very scant praise & should not be considered as a positive. Despite an entire island there are very few Dinosaurs on show, there are two T-Rex's, a Pterodactyl & something with a tentacle. I say something with a tentacle because we only ever see a single tentacle that one character wrestles with a bit before it lets him go for no apparent reason. There's a couple of mildly gory moments as someone is bitten in half & there's a severed foot.

Filmed in California in Malibu & Long Beach apparently the locales don't look intimidating enough & you never feel any atmosphere or danger, I mean where's the erupting Volcano that destroys the island? The acting is bad, Howell seems uninterested, Timothy Bottoms seems lost while the guy who wrote this thing Darren Dalton has a fairly large role as Cole Stevens.

The Land That Time Forgot is a terrible low budget sci-fi fantasy film with awful production values, sloppy action & bad CGI Dinosaurs. Stick to the 1975 version as it's tens better than this.

I have seen worse from Syfy/The Asylum, but really is it saying much? This is a very poor film, both as an adaptation and on its own merits. I haven't seen the 1975 film in some time, but I do remember it being much better than this.

The whole movie looks shoddy, the scenery looks tacky, the editing is sloppy and the whole picture quality has a rather grainy feel to it. The effects are not as bad as other Syfy movies, but they are still pretty cheap-looking.

That leads me to a big problem I had with the film. I did like seeing the dinosaurs, despite not being impressed entirely by how they looked, but not only are they underused there are not enough of them. And because there are little or no thrills and suspense, despite them meaning to be a pivotal part of the story, you had the impression they were just there with no reason to be.

Pacing is another issue, again because of the lack of build ups, suspense and thrills and because of the sluggish pace and some pointless and overlong expositions, the whole film feels like a dull affair.

Add to that bad direction, a good idea of a story explored very badly, poorly written characterisation and cheesy scripting and you have an even duller affair. I forgot the acting, which was really poor, including a visibly embarrassed Timothy Bottoms.

Overall, not Syfy's worst but still a mess. 2/10 Bethany Cox

THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT is another pathetic attempt by The Asylum to cash in on a then-popular Hollywood blockbuster, namely LAND OF THE LOST. This lacklustre cheapie is based on a novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs and has a washed-up Timothy Bottoms playing a character called Captain Burroughs, but otherwise it has nothing to do with the original book, which was filmed really well in Britain in 1974 and stars Doug McClure (one of my favourite childhood movies). This was directed by and stars C. Thomas Howell, who does a terrible job in both respects. Castaways end up on a desert island in the Bermuda Triangle, where they find themselves menaced by a badly-animated CGI T-Rex and some random Nazis. The acting is as poor as the effects work, and it's so interminable that it seems to go on and on and on.