PRIMEVAL (2007)

PRIMEVAL: AFRICA ADDIO meets ANACONDA by Eric M. Harvey

PRIMEVAL opened in theaters earlier this year. January, to be exact. For those not in the know, that’s when studios dump their shit product into moviehouses.

I couldn’t figure what the hell PRIMEVAL was about. They advertised it as a supernatural serial killer movie set in Africa.

Then I found out, right at the end of it’s two week theatrical run, it’s about a giant killer crocodile.

Note to PRIMEVAL’s marketing geniuses: I would have gone and seen it if I knew it was about a giant killer crocodile, you fucking idiots.

The studio seemed to realize that the “mysterious” marketing campaign was a failure (one of the worst I’ve ever seen) because now the DVD packaging is all about the crocodile.

There’s even a “Croc-umentary”.

A hunky cable news reporter without any personality (Dominic Purcell, PRISON BREAK) fucks up a story and is sent to Africa with his Rochester-esque cameraman (Orlando Jones) and a hot bimbo cat magazine reporter (Brooke Langton) who likes to save dogs.

The reason they go? To catch a giant crocodile named Gustave and inadvertently, fight the local African warlords.

Seriously, that’s the plot. But guess what?

This film is a fine example of cut-to-the-chase genre writing.

We got a disgraced reporter. We got a cameraman who lets you know he's a cameraman because he complains about an out of focus shot of a news anchor when we first meet him. We got a cat magazine reporter who wants to make the big jump to cable news reporting. We got a reason to go to Africa. We got a Steve Irwin clone that doesn’t even get a proper introduction to the rest of the cast; he’s introduced to the audience by a clip of his TV show, and then 5 minutes later he’s just tooling around Africa with the rest of them. This is screenwriting.

That’s a lot of ground to cover. So what do you do? You get a TV director (Michael Katelman, GILMORE GIRLS, NORTHEREN EXPOSURE) to craft this sucker into a streamlined, no bullshit action/horror pic.

Within the first 19 minutes, we get a mass grave with maggots, the crocodile has killed a stuffy British professor of some kind, we’re properly introduced to the main cast (see above), we go to Africa, we get ambushed by warlords in a pretty well-shot action scene (it’s not major in anyway, but old school in it’s execution, i.e. you can see everything).

We're not done though: a little girl gets eaten and Jurgen Prochnow (DAS BOOT, BEERFEST, BEVERLY HILLS COP II) as Quint from JAWS shows up and embarrasses the rest of the cast because he can actually act. All this in 19 minutes.

Most directors with lofty intentions would have dragged this son-of-a-bitch to the 40-minute mark by now. Not Katelman. He was the first unit director on Van Damme’s CYBORG (directed by Albert Pyun) and second unit assistant director on PREDATOR.

Hell, he was first assistant director on Pyun’s CAPTAIN AMERICA fiasco. He’s Cannon Pictures approved and Pyun-tastic!

You know, I really can’t believe how much I liked PRIMEVAL.

Maybe it's because you get to watch people say lines like:

STEVE IRWIN CLONE: Did you know Crocodiles haven’t changed much since the Triassic? Why should they? They’re the most efficient killing machines on the planet.

ORLANDO JONES: This crocodile’s like OJ Simpson. He messed up when he killed that white woman.

JURGEN PROCHNOW (a long way from DAS BOOT): You don’t seem stupid so you must be insane.

ORLANDO JONES: I would never say this in front of a bunch of white people, but slavery was a good thing. Anything to get the fuck out of Africa sounds good to me.

Maybe I liked when Jones says he’s going out to film establishing shots for the report they’re doing, doesn’t walk that far away from the camp, and encounters a rhino, zebras and a giraffe, which seem to be all hanging out together, as if he’s at Lion Country Safari.

All they needed was a bear and a cougar fighting and it would've been the best movie since WONDER OF IT ALL.

Maybe I liked it for the scene where Jones calls the crocodile a punk bitch, because his character’s from Brooklyn.

I really liked Prochnow’s Quint turn. We need more Quints in movies. A Quint would’ve made KNOCKED UP better; Quint could have been a Planned Parenthood doctor, “I’ll catch it…and kill it…for 10!”

The weird thing about the movie is the abundance of political commentary on the anarchic state of certain parts of Africa right now. It takes up a lot of time in this movie. Some good action scenes come out of it, but it veers the movie off course, especially in a giant killer crocodile flick.

Roger Corman always liked to have a little social commentary in his movies, but I’m sure he would have pulled Katelman aside and said, “Look, Mike, enough with the Africans. And where's the boobage?”

Now, I tell you, they don’t make this kind of movie anymore. So much so I kept thinking that it was made in 1993 and someone at Disney finally got around to releasing it.

Especially so since it went out under the Hollywood Pictures arm of the aforementioned conglomerate (“If it’s the Sphinx, it stinks!”).

But there’s some good gore, the croc isn’t bad for CGI and the supporting cast is up for the task. Langton as the cat reporter, I don’t mind so much; she’s hot and acts enough to look like she might’ve done some summer stock, but casting Purcell and Jones as your leads is about the stupidest thing one could do.

This is the second film this year I’ve seen Purcell in (the other was THE GRAVEDANCERS) and he just cannot act. There’s not one shred of personality in him. It’s incredible to me that he’s an actor. Apparently, his next starring role is in a supernatural Nazi film. Directed by Joel Schumacher. Which I guess is fitting.

Orlando Jones…well, he’s the most unfunny motherfucker ever to walk the planet. The best thing he did was play a retarded magazine seller in OFFICE SPACE and became immediately unfunny in the movie when he quit affecting retardation.

You get past these two shmoes, PRIMEVAL is good Saturday night, drive-in fun, provided you drink a six-pack. Or two.

And by the way, am I supposed to believe that since this was inspired by true events, two white reporters and their jovial Negro sidekick went over to Africa to catch a giant crocodile and fight warlords for CNN? For what? Sweeps week?