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Imagine this: it’s 1978, you’re a Trekkie, and you’ve just learned that, after a decade off the air, they’re making a movie of Star Trek.

Starring Jerry Lewis as Captain Kirk.

Punch in the gut, right?

That’s how I felt when I saw the trailer for the new Land of the Lost movie starring Will Ferrell. Oh. My. God.

Okay, Land of the Lost was a dopey 1970s Saturday morning TV show. But it was good, dammit. They had scripts by Larry Niven, Theodore Sturgeon, Ben Bova, and David Gerrold, which introduced concepts like time loops and closed universes to what had, I’m sure, originally been intended as an unexceptional kids’ show with dinosaurs. Remaking it as a stupidity-comedy with the star of Elf and Anchorman and Blades of Glory is… well, it’s like a bad, bad movie of a fondly remembered book. Yes, the book is still there, but the movie swamps it in the public consciousness and poisons one’s memories.

Feh, I say. Feh and feh.

(Footnote: Yes, I liked Ferrell in Stranger than Fiction. But the trailer for Land of the Lost makes clear that this is not, shall we say, a film in that mode.)

(Footnote 2: For more information on the real Land of the Lost:
http://www.landofthelost.com/faq.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_of_the_Lost_(1974_TV_series))