Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5508 in DVD
• Released on: 2005-03-14
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 98 minutes

Synopsis
In the last days of the Neanderthals, Ayla, a young orphan, must overcome prejudice when she joins a new tribe.

Customer Reviews

Pretty bad...
I ignored all the bad reviews and rented this, thinking at least if it was a rubbish film I'd have got to see Daryl Hannah dressed up as a cavewoman. And that's about all there is that's good about it.

Clan of the Cave Bear is an intricate, expansive book, and although a film about it sounds great in prospect there's no way it could ever work unless it was done in a three-hour epic Lord of the Rings style. The book series sometimes comes across a little "Ayla the mammoth slayer" in the sense that she is perfect at everything and the film is even worse for this. The book shows us the multi-layered personalities and characters of many of the people, characters like Broud, Creb and Iza are given depth and substance, here they are just a tool and we never get to know anything about them...even Ayla is completely remote as a character. The neanderthal are portrayed as "Me man, you WO-man" far more than in the book...in which Jean M Auel goes into great depth about why the neanderthal act the way they do, and what motivates certain characters. The film shows none of this. The acting is very poor, the set cheap looking, the makeup laughable and too little subtitled dialogue is used so we are hardly given a tangible story. In the book Ayla is nothing short of a hero, in the film she is nothing more than a pretty blonde thing who comes across as a little bit stupid and more than a touch wooden. Perhaps this story should be given the Peter Jackson treatment, nothing short of this will do the Cave Bear books justice.

If, like one of my friends, you have a fetish for seeing a sexy woman dressed up in fur running around with bones (literally), watch it. Otherwise, read the book and stay well away from this, because it will taint your view of the book forever.

Give it a miss
I agree with the first reviewer, I adore the books but this film was truly awful. I saw it when it released at the cinema which is some years ago now and the only memorable thing was how dreadful it was.

not a patch on the book!
This film is truly awful! I am a great fan of Jean M. Auel, she must cringe every time someone mentions the film to her. It does the book NO justice at all.
The only thing it gets right is that Daryl Hannah does look like Ayla, but not worth watching the film for,
Sorry to disappoint, but believe me, you will be more disappointed if you sit through the film.