MANILA, Philippines??10,000 BC? is a fictional rendering of the travails of a tribe of mammoth hunters who are kidnapped as slave labor for the construction of pyramids to honor a man-god who could be an extraterrestrial. ?That?s a lot of maybe?s and what-if?s, and the ?fantasticating? rendering strains credulity.

One option is to take this movie on its own speculative terms and accept whatever it dishes out as harmless armchair anthropology. After a while, however, its makers? speculative storytelling becomes too muddled to be taken even un-seriously.

A certain level of consistency appears to be called for, and this is where this movie falters. Its tribesmen seem to have come out of Central Casting, its resident soothsayer is merely generic in her ritual exoticism, and the blue-eyed girl whose abduction takes the tribesmen all the way to the pyramids looks like the quintessential Hollywood starlet. ?Apocalypto? went pretty much through similar speculative territory, with greater consistency and veracity.

On the plus side, ?10,000 BC? impresses with its stunning digitized images of mammoths in frantic flight, gigantic pyramids in the process of construction, ?thousands? of slaves being forced to work to within an inch of their lives, monster birds eviscerating their victims with their sharp beaks, and a wide range of stunning vistas depicting an age gone by.

Unfortunately, this visual alchemy can?t completely make up for the muddled storytelling that hobbles this production.

?Lars and the Real Girl?

Seen in preview, this film quickly engages our attention when it turns out to be about an otherwise nice young man (Ryan Gosling) who is such a psychological basket case that he can?t relate to real people, and thus acquires a girlfriend who turns out to be?an inflatable doll.

This revelation is a big surprise, but to its eternal credit, the film doesn?t exploit it for its obvious shock value. Instead, it uses its protagonist?s weird psychological problem as an opportunity to show how relationships can be taken to extremes without the people involved in them losing their humanity.

This is a difficult feat to pull off, so the film is an impressive achievement. In time, its central problem involves, not just Lars, but also his brother and sister-in-law, and a really good psychiatrist. She convinces the people around her patient that they can help him best by not rejecting his fantasy doll-girlfriend, but by relating to her as though she were a real person.

Why? Well, she points out that the reason Lars has ?fallen? for an inflatable doll is because, at this warped stage of his psychological development, that?s the best he can do to not go really crazy.

As a result, Lars? circle of ?consenting friends? eventually includes the people in his office?and even his church?s congregation! Yes, they all play along and befriend ?Bianca,? the inflatable doll, so that Lars gets the support he needs.

True enough, the time comes when Lars slowly gets over his warped view of life, and needs Bianca less and less. Thematically, what comes through most of all is our need for the people around us not to judge us, but to simply love and help see us through the low points in our lives. That may seem ?crazy??but it makes a whole lot of emotive and empathetic sense!