10,000 B.C. ( **1/2 )

March 7, 2008 9:36 a.m. EST

1hr 49min - Rated PG-13 - Adventure drama

Wow: they spoke English 12,000 years ago?

Who knew?

10.000 B.C. is a prehistoric adventure, a tribal warfare epic set, well, you know when.

And the language convention actually does a lot less harm than you might think, although history purists will have a field day complaining about that and other liberties taken throughout this bit of time-travel escapism aimed at a youthful audience.

Steven Strait plays D'Leh (the German word for "hero," backwards), a 21-year-old woolly-mammoth hunter who lives among a primitive mountain tribe that can only survive by hunting a mammoth each year as the herd migrates through the tribe's homeland.

He carries around a strong measure of guilt about the seemingly disloyal behavior of his absent father and credit he received for an act of bravery that he feels he doesn't deserve.

So he feels like an outcast and a coward.

But now, without delay, D'Leh must lead a small group of hunters turned warriors across a vast uncharted desert, battling prehistoric predators, including saber-toothed tigers, as they hunt for the woman D'Leh loves, played by Camilla Belle.

She's been kidnapped during a raid on their village by an army of mysterious slave-trading warlords, and is probably headed to Egypt to work as a slave on the pyramids.

During their journey, the rescuers must battle the harsh elements and encounter a civilization that they didn't know existed.

Co-writer and director Roland Emmerich, who is obviously unhappy unless he's working on a large scale, has made his share of respectable or even superior epics, including Independence Day, The Patriot, Stargate, and The Day After Tomorrow. Even Godzilla had its moments.

10,000 B.C. has a simplistic, generic narrative, mixing elements from Apocalypto, Quest for Fire, and 300.

But the vast landscapes offer visual majesty, the CGI special effects -- mostly for the fearsome and mammoth beasts -- are adroitly and even modestly employed, the dialogue manages to remain (almost) anachronism-free, and the pacing remains true to the era, the editors resisting the understandable temptation to cater to modern-day zero-tolerance attention spans.

Omar Sharif narrates effectively, and the two leads have natural star quality.

But in the final analysis, the novelty of watching people and beasts -- especially during a thrilling woolly-mammoth stampede -- from this particular era on the big screen, as if it were a natural-history museum diorama come to life, may be more than enough to hold young audience members in relative thrall.

10,000 B.C. is a watchable and moderately admirable prehistory lesson, with B.C. in this instance also standing for "Bring Children."