Look! A themed, double review!

So it’s been a long time since you’ve heard from me and I’m sorry. But not as sorry as I am for seeing 10,000BC. In order to ease my pain, I’m making this edition of Rachel’s Reels into double review of both 10,000BC and Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day. This makes sense, really, as they’re both…historical pieces. Note the very broad definition of “historical” I’m using .

There are other similarities too. For instance, parts of Miss Pettigrew deals with the bombings of London at the start of WWII. This brings to mind something that was missing from 10,000BC: a great, giant, modern weapon that could have swept in, killing the entire cast and ending the damn movie. Death ray, robo-dinosaur, I’m not picky.

But let’s jump into the plots, shall we? Note the very broad definition of “plot” I’m using. 10,000BC is about a clan of ancient people who must adapt to a changing way of life. Apparently, their wooly mammoth food source is dying out or moving or something. So now the clan is going to have to transition from being hunters to being warriors.

Luckily there’s a prophecy that one of them is going to lead this charge. His name is D’leh. D’leh, like all of his comrades, has really bad hair and speaks not in contractions. And when he speaks, all formal like, he has a very strange accent. Now, I’m not going to pretend to know what cavemen sounded like, but I bet they didn’t talk like some Transylvanian morons who spent all their summer vacations in India. My point, and I want to say it’s hard to have a point when assessing this movie, is that our ancestors were not vampires from the Himalayas. They were apparently animal-lovers as D’leh rescues a saber-tooth tiger and mourns for the mistreatment of wooly mammoths. This is where a robo-dinosaur would have come in handy. You try to pet robo-raptor and he bites your face off. End of movie.

Unfortunately, this movie is robo-dinosaurless, so D’leh must lead his buddies on an expedition to become warriors. Also to rescue their compatriots, including his girlfriend, who have been kidnapped by some Egyptians? Maybe? I don’t know. They build pyramids. And also have some very nifty red-sailed boats. Luckily for D’leh, all of the other ancient cultures he encounters also have prophecies about him and a surplus of people standing by to translate all of D’leh’s inspirational unity talk. They all band together and fight the pyramid-builders, freeing all the slaves and rescuing their friends. At some point in all the excitement, D’leh’s girlfriend dies…and then comes back to life, because D’leh made eye contact with a wooly mammoth? I don’t know?!?!?! Gah, I can’t handle this movie anymore…

Ahem. Miss Pettigrew, on the other hand, is both delightful and actually historical, not in the broad sense. Frances McDormand stars as Miss Pettigrew, sad, impoverished nanny who, after being fired yet again, poses as a social secretary for Amy Adams’ Delyshia LeFosse. Nice name. Anyway, Miss Pettigrew is at first astonished by Delyshia’s lifestyle, what the spending of the money and the having of multiple boyfriends, but eventually she gets swept along with the ride.

Unlike Delyshia, Miss Pettigrew never forgets who she is and is the one character in the whole movie who stands firm for what she knows is important. The reward for this good moral certitude is sadly, more poverty, as Delyshia sorts her life out, picks the right boyfriends and heads off for a new life in New York, presumably to escape the impending war that’s going to ravage London. Luckily Miss Pettigrew does score a date with Julius Caesar (Ciaran Hinds) and can speak with contractions and doesn’t have dreadlocks.

To recap, if you want to see a movie about a specific, real historical period, pick Miss Pettigrew. If you’re a severe masochist, go with 10,000 BC. If you hope Amy Adams doesn’t play frothy, bubbly breathy-voiced ingénues for the rest of her career, raise your hand. And if you want a robo-dinosaur, you’re out of luck.