Land of the Lost is a 2009 American science fiction adventure comedy film directed by Brad Silberling, written by Chris Henchy and Dennis McNicholas and starring Will Ferrell, Danny McBride, Anna Friel and Jorma Taccone, loosely based on the 1974 Sid and Marty Krofft television series of the same name.

The enthusiastic founder of "quantum paleontology", Dr. Rick Marshall has a low-level job at the La Brea Tar Pits, three years after a disastrous interview with Matt Lauer on Today went viral and ruined his career.

Doctoral candidate from Cambridge Holly Cantrell tells him that his controversial theories, combining time warps and paleontology, inspired her.

She shows him a fossil with an imprint of a cigarette lighter that he recognizes as his own, along with a crystal made into a necklace that gives off strong tachyon energy.

She convinces him to finish his tachyon amplifier and go on an expedition to the Devil's Canyon Mystery Cave theme park where she found the fossil.

As they float into the cave on a small inflatable raft with the theme park's owner Will Stanton in the role of a paddler and narrator, Marshall detects high levels of tachyons.

Having regained their senses in a sandy desert interspersed with items from many eras and discovered that the amplifier is nowhere to be seen, the three travellers rescue an apeman by the name of Chaka, who becomes their friend and guide.

They spend the night in a cave where they have taken refuge from a pursuing telepathically endowed tyrannosaur they nickname "Grumpy", who develops a grudge against Marshall for being intellectually disparaged.

In the morning, Marshall receives a telepathic invocation for help and is being drawn to run towards ancient ruins, where they encounter reptiloids called the Sleestak before meeting Enik the Altrusian, who sent the message.

Exiled by the Zarn, who wants to take over the Earth with his Sleestak minions, Enik can prevent the invasion if Marshall gets the tachyon amplifier.

Led by Chaka, the group enters a rocky wasteland littered with artefacts from different epochs, encountering compsognathuses, dromaeosaurs, Grumpy, and a female allosaur nicknamed "Big Alice".

Treading lightly on the thin volcanic-glass floor of the glowing caldera, Marshall gives himself over to the music of A Chorus Line coming from the tachyon amplifier, and dancingly meanders between the pterosaurian eggs towards the device.

While Marshall, Will and Chaka go on a psychedelic spree, Holly is walking about with the tachyon amplifier, which detects a signal coming from an underground cavity, where she picks up a dinosaurian egg and learns from a holographic recording left by the long-deceased Zarn that Enik the Altrusian is an escaped convict who, having overtaken the central pylon and its tachyonic crystals, is planning to go on a rampage across time and space.

Deemed to be guilty of providing assistance to Enik, she is captured by Sleestak and brought to the Library of Skulls for a summary execution.

Having sent Chaka to bring Enik, Marshall and Will rescue Holly by pushing the Sleestak executioners into a well with red-hot magma at its bottom.

The villain leaves to open a wormhole between the prehistoric Land of the Lost and the modern Earth, which is the first habitable planet to be pervaded by his army of rapidly reproducing Sleestak reptiloids.

A triumphant Marshall reappears on Today with the dinosaurian egg Holly brought back, promoting his new book, Matt Lauer Can Suck It!

[5] Syfy aired a marathon of the original series on Memorial Day in 2009 in coordination with the studio to have frequent film clips and an interview with Sid and Marty Krofft.

"Chakker" was available to play on the film's official Web site while "Crystal Adventure" was a free downloadable game for iPhones from Kewlbox.

[21][22] Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly remarked that it "has stray amusing tidbits, but overall it leaves you feeling splattered",[23] Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter wrote: "Lame sketch comedy, an uninspired performance from Will Ferrell and an overall failure of the imagination turn Brad Silberling's Land of the Lost into a lethargic meander through a wilderness of misfiring gags.