Camilla Belle as Evolet tries to escape but is ultimately kidnapped, triggering her beloved’s hunt to free her, in 10,000 B.C.

Warner Bros. Pictures

At heart, 10,000 B.C. is a prehistoric love story, about a young man trying to rescue his kidnapped girlfriend.

But it’s certainly one of the wildest and hairiest love stories you’ll see.

Although the film may offer up a big slice of prehistory preposterousness (hey, it’s prehistory, so almost anything goes), that doesn’t stop it from being a great deal of fun as well.

10,000 B.C. is a real old-fashioned (10,000 years of old-fashioned, in fact) “popcorn” movie with a plot that’s straightforward and simple, but also full of action and adventure. Basically: a band of mammoth hunters set out on foot in pursuit of a band of slave traders on horseback (“four-legged demons,” as they’re called) who have raided their tribe. The demons have made off with several rugged young men as well as lovely, blue-eyed Evolet (Camilla Belle), who has been prophesied by the Old Mother of the tribe as the person who will some day influence the rise of a great hunter. Not only will he get to carry the White Spear of the Yagahl Tribe as their leader, but he will bring them to a new life, before the mammoths they hunt for food become extinct.

One of the rescuers is D’Leh (Steven Strait of the Disney film Sky High) who hopes to save his sweetheart, Evolet, and prove his worth to the rest of the tribe. Legend has it that D’Leh’s father, the former White Spear carrier, had abandoned the tribe for parts unknown. The now-shunned D’Leh is called “son of the coward.”

That’s the jumping-off point for roaring action that begins with an impressive mammoth hunt, much like the Plains Indians once hunted buffalo, only with the tribesmen trying to sidestep the giant woolly hoofs of the beasts as they thunderously lumber across the landscape. Soon afterward they’re off on their rescue mission and a series of wild adventures — dodging giant precursors of flightless ostriches that swoop in to attack in a jungle of tall grasses, facing down a saber-toothed tiger, trekking across a parched desert, fearing danger from suspicious African tribes, discovering an ancient civilization ruled by a self-proclaimed “god” who has enslaved tens of thousands to construct his giant stone mausoleum. One of the most impressive sights in the film, aside from the mammoths who improbably have been brought south to help construct the tomb, are the long boats that cruise the Nile, their giant pink crossed sails making them look like enormous butterflies.

Much of this is colorful hokum, of course, fueled by a lot of superstitious mumbo-jumbo and talk of the “spirit world” from the wise, all-seeing, all-knowing Old Mother (Mona Hammond). She spends much of her screen time making futuristic prophecies while in a trance. (There’s also sage, very serious narration by Omar Sharif.) The rescuers, who seem to start somewhere in snowy, mountainous northern Europe (the “great mountains” are actually in New Zealand) soon are in the middle of Africa and then the deserts of North Africa, without any sense of how they might have traversed such great distances in so short a time nor with any indication that they had to cross the Mediterranean Sea somewhere along the line.

The rescuers are led at first by the wise old White Spear carrier known as TicTic (Cliff Curtis). But it’s not long before D’Leh comes to the fore, suddenly revered by his compatriots, and eventually by the African tribesmen they run across in their adventures, for having more or less befriended that massive saber-toothed tiger. He’s a prehistoric Indiana Jones.

Director Roland Emmerich (The Day After Tomorrow, Independence Day) has woven a series of hair-raising adventures into a fast-paced wild ride, climaxing with a fabulous ancient civilization sequence that recalls his work on the Stargate movie. Sure, the dialogue may be cartoonish. But you can’t dismiss those mammoths lumbering across the screen, the hungry ostrich creatures or those giant tombs in the desert.

*** 1/210,000 B.C.

Starring: Steven Strait, Camilla Belle, Cliff Curtis, Mon Hammond

Rated: PG-13, intense action and violence

mjanuson@projo.com