'Land Of The Lost' Appears To Have At Least Gotten The Sleestaks Right
If your last glimpse of Universal's Land of the Lost movie—featuring Will Ferrell smoking a butt by the La Brea Tar Pits—left you a little underwhelmed, we think this official first leaked image should help ease concerns that a beloved Saturday morning memory of your youth is about to be gang-raped by Hollywood. In it, the part-reptilian/part-insectoid/all-badass Sleestaks of the original are shown to have made the transition to big-screen Ferrell buffoonery largely intact. Director Brad Siberling explains why:
[Silberling] (Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events) says he fought to keep the human shape of the Sleestak from Sid & Marty Krofft's original production, and not give into the urge to render them as spindly computerized beings. [...]
"There is a sense of humor that I loved from the original show that can only come from an actor trying to negotiate the suit. If it became CG, they'd be too perfect. For the Sleestak to remain in people's memories, it tells you that it was about who was in the suit."
Like any Sid & Marty Krofft production, LOTL's production values weren't of the highest caliber—yet everyone involved took the ridiculous sci-fi/caveman material so seriously, it all worked. (At least to our inner seven-year-old, who occasionally still wakes up screaming to Sleestak-populated nightmares.) Hopefully the Ferrellized take on the material (the comedian, notes slashilm.com, "plays Dr. Marshall, a wacky scientist who ends up the laughingstock of the scientific community after attacking the quadriplegic and wheelchair-bound Stephen Hawking while being interviewed on Anderson Cooper 360") won't indulge every wacky temptation, like casting an uncredited Rob Schneider as Cha-Ka, played as a crass, vaguely Asian stereotype.
