The plot is a decent adventure but totally reminds me of a cross between Raiders of the Lost Ark and Romancing the Stone. It totally fell short for me with lame characters and honestly, didn't produce many laughs for my 8-year old. I think she thought the animals were the funniest characters and they were pretty minor ones at that. I was turned-off by the negative image of Freddie, the Latino sidekick, portrayed as lazy, into soap operas, & only doing favors for money. Then the female lead, Sara, has a voice of a child and an unfeasible curvaceous body. If the body her creators gave her isn't odd enough, then they decide that her "adventure clothes" should be a super tight tank top with ample cleavage hanging out throughout the film, short shorts showing a J-Lo round bottom, and her movements are consistently over-dramatized feminine (hand on hips, swaying hips while walking). It's actually a bit laughable because she's so ridiculously un-real, boring and sadly, sends a wrong message to boys and girls alike. Tad's character is also a strange creation. The film starts with him as a 5-year old boy very interested archeology, dreaming to become an archaeologist, then...(?) flash-forwards to him as a bumbling bricklayer - nothing wrong with this but there's a huge gap with this transition and not sure what it says to kids.
For my 8-year old daughter, the action scenes and surprises were a notch-up from most films we see (a couple of instances where she hid her eyes). On the other hand, I think she was grateful for a "bigger kid" movie than what we are used to seeing. Overall, I wouldn't recommend this or choose it again. Surely, we can make better films for children in the 8-12 age range and in the meantime, you can find a better film to watch than this one.
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