The channel formerly known as Sci-Fi partnered with a German company to produce the film Lost City Raiders.

You know where this is going.  But it gets worse.

Lost City Raiders is about a father and his two sons who eke out a living scavenging relics from the cities of the world, which now reside mostly underwater due to global warming.  Their most recent jobs including finding ancient artifacts for the Vatican, in particular a scepter that is supposed to be able to magically reverse the ever rising seas and bring land back to the- well, land.  Only the father is not actually the father, the brothers are not brothers, and the Vatican has a painting of Moses holding this magic scepter of an Egyptian god and they think is OK.

At its heart, Lost City Raiders is a mash up of The Day After Tomorrow, Indiana Jones, and Waterworld, only SyFy had a hand in the film’s production, meaning it is not good.  Seeing a name like James Brolin might inspire hope in some that an actor of his stature would indicate that the film was a cut above most SyFy drivel.  While it is true that it is not as bad as most of what I have seen from that network, it is still pretty terrible, Brolin notwithstanding.  In fact, Brolin only serves to make the film worse, as his acting is flat out terrible in this film.  The death of his character roughly a third of the way in is a sort of blessing, as it gives one the opportunity to really see how bad everyone else is as well, and draws attention to the sadly overused and misplaced slow motion effects that try to make mundane scenes seem intense, but in fact only serve to render them as silly.

It is an odd world we find in the 2048 of Lost City Raiders.  Most of the world is under water, and yet everyone’s cell phones and computers and everything else still seem to work just fine.  Strange, considering that this film is shoving a not so subtle global warming alarmist agenda.  You would think it would show a world in ruins, that being the hope of his Highness Al Gore and his minions, but instead, we get a world that is just a little more wet.  Of course, there is the evil power mad land baron, who, not content with owning most of the remaining dry land on Earth, wants to use the magical scepter to completely flood the world, thus forcing everyone on Earth to live on his floating cities- only to then make the waters subside, so that he will own every scrap of dry land to be found, which he will of course have bought up at pennies on the dollar while it was submerged and thought useless.

If I have to point out the absurdity of any of this, then you have not been paying attention.

What is good about the film?  Two things- the special effects are mostly pretty good, what there are of them, surprisingly so for a low budget TV movie, and Elodie Frenck, who, while not a terribly gifted actress, is very beautiful and is introduced in the movie rocking a metric ton of cleavage.

The DVD transfer looks very good, and I surmise that this is due to the fact that they didn’t bother with any special features whatsoever on the disc, allowing for less compression for the film.  Considering this film is primarily global warming propaganda, I would assume they would have at least had interviews or commentary with the main actors espousing the party line drivel, but they didn’t even have that.  One can only wonder why…

Of course, they list special features on the back of the box.  They tell you that 5.1 surround, subtitles, and previews are “special features”.  Being able to hear a film made after the silent era is not special, nor are subtitles or trailers for other bad films.

If you are the type of person who is unable to see through the obvious motivations behind Al Gore and his global warming agenda, and you can’t get enough of seeing what the world might look like after the Climate Armageddon, then by all means, watch Lost City Raiders.  If, on the other hand, you have something- anything- better to do with 98 minutes of your time, then do not see this film.  You will be glad you did.  Err, didn’t.

-Ed-