The Clan of the Cave Bear

I was a history major in college, but don’t ask me to account for the veracity of anything you see in this flick. Actually, this story is supposed to be prehistoric, so I guess that would put it into the anthropologist’s territory. Whatever. As it is, these adventures of Ice Age Barbie are mildly diverting, if not exactly exciting. Daryl Hannah does a decent job portraying the heroine, not that the script of grunts and gestures really makes big time demands on any of the actors. The most striking thing that I found in this representation of Paleolithic humanity was the large role that shame played in community relations back then (at least as they’re imagined here); one can’t help but think, from the perspective of these flamboyantly shameless times, that maybe we as a species unlearned something important. In cinematic terms, this movie is OK—nothing great, nothing terrible, interesting enough to hold the viewer’s attention but not artful or insightful enough to really foster any breakthroughs. At least when you watch it you can be thankful that your cave has decent heating and is lacking in murderous bears. Probably. Your spirit animal may vary.