In the classic Charlie Brown cartoons, Charlie often found himself faced with kicking a football that was being held by Lucy. Every time he went to kick it, Lucy would pull it away, making poor Charlie land unceremoniously on his back. In his mind though, he always hoped that Lucy would one day let him kick that ball.

Now imagine the film Year One is Lucy and the ball represents the hope that its talented cast of funny guys won’t let you down. And who does the audience play in this analogy? That’s right, the schmuck Charlie Brown, who really should know better. You see, we thought there was a chance that this was going to be one funny film.

Caveman Zed (Jack Black) causes a catastrophic fire, which finds him being cast out of his settlement. His young friend Oh (Michael Cera) tags along on in this prehistoric road trip. In truth though, it’s more of a non-historic road trip. You see, not long into their journey, when they discover that the world isn’t really that flat, they come across Cain (David Cross) and Abel (Paul Rudd) – you know, those two guys from the bible. A little later, they meet Abraham (Hank Azaria) and a few more bible-licious characters.

What happened Jack? You used to be funny - now I can't even look at you.

Just to clarify things, there is no time travel involved; these two cavemen just happen to come across these biblical and - certainly from an evolutionary standpoint - fictional characters. And everyone talks English, naturally.

But let’s not let a small thing like history get in the way of greatness. It didn’t stop Roland Emmerich and his bewildering 10,000 BC from being a classic film – everything about that effort prevented it from being that.

So you shake your head and look at the piece of paper in front of you with an abundance of great comedic talent involved – surely there was just too many of them to make this a stinker? So what if director Harold Ramis hasn’t directed a decent film since 1993’s Groundhog Day – he’s a Ghostbuster!

But as the film flickers in front of you, without one titter to be heard, you soon realise that all hope is lost; Lucy has done it again. Though should any of us really be surprised? Jack Black hasn’t been funny in a film for some years now. And Michael Cera’s Hollywood career to date has essentially been playing the same character he played in the truly funny TV show Arrested Development. Here he plays George Michael in a caveman costume with slightly longer hair. But with every line he delivers, he’s still that shy kid who runs the Banana Stand and loves his cousin Maybe.

Even the under-appreciated Oliver Platt’s turn as the camp high priest is a sheer embarrassment to witness, as is Hank Azaria; the thing is both have proved they can act, as they did so well together in TV’s Huff. Here though, they both simply fail big time on the big screen.

But in their defence, they can only be as good as the script, which is, you guessed it, as weak as Ribena Light. It could have worked, if it was three minutes long on a sketch on Saturday Night Live. But add another 94 minutes to it and the joke is completely on the audience for sitting and suffering through it all. It even resorts to the three P’s – poo, pee and penises. Yes, it gets that desperate. The final insult is when the rolling credit out-takes get bigger laughs than the rest of the film.

So what has history taught us? Well, as we lay here in the dirt, looking up at the sky, we’ve learnt that we’ve only got ourselves to blame for thinking that Jack Black can be funny in a funny film again. Will we ever learn?