Verdict: You might laugh -- if you've been living under a rock.

Details: Starring Kristin Johnson, Stephen Baldwin, Mark Addy and Jane Krakowski. Rated PG for innuendo and brief language.

Rate it: Write your own review

Review: This anemic sequel to 1994's "The Flintstones" flails around like a pterodactyl stuck in the La Brea Tar Pits. As entertainment for kids, or for adults, it misjudges its audience by at least a millennium.

John Goodman wisely bowed out of this latest installment in the franchise, leaving the role of Fred Flintstone to Mark Addy ("The Full Monty"). Imagine cross-breeding Jackie Gleason with Nathan Lane, and you have a fair idea of what to expect from Addy.

Stephen Baldwin earns his thespian stripes by running the gamut of emotions from dim to dimmer as Fred's sidekick, Ed Norton . . . er, Barney Rubble. Elizabeth Taylor put in an amusing, self-effacing appearance in the original; here we have Joan Collins, which is not so much a leap as a plunge.

The most entertaining character by far is Dino, Fred's pet dinosaur. He appears for a few brief scenes. (Tape the TV spots; you'll see most of Dino's footage and save yourself money.)

The plot, which could be called "The Flintstones: The Pre-Prehistoric Years," chronicles Fred's courtship of Wilma (Kristen Johnston), who, it turns out, comes from old money. (How old "old money" was in the Stone Age is never addressed.) If the writers were trying to win over the pre-teen set, they couldn't have picked a more yawn-inducing premise. They're so out of touch that they actually think the Rolling Stones are contemporary. To the Stone Age, maybe, but not to today's audiences.

There's a running gag about a guy who is poisoning the water supplies in order to make dinosaurs extinct. Too bad he couldn't get to the producers before they laid this cinematic egg of truly brontosaurian proportions.

— Steve Uhler, Cox News Service