The heroes of this movie are a pencil-thin, prepubescent boy in a red sweater and Zap Rowsdower. That alone earns this movie two turkeys.

Our movie begins with a pre-credit sequence of some tank top and ski mask wearing thugs with hourglass tattoos on their shoulders chasing a warmly dressed man through the snowy forests of Canada. Another thug and an odd-looking man in a black trenchcoat are loading a shotgun and smiling menacingly. Cut to a view of the woods. BANG! Roll credits.

The post-credit sequence begins "seven years later" with the aforementioned pencil-thin boy visiting a grave. From this we are supposed to deduce that the warmly dressed man was his father and that he was killed by the thugs. The boy, Troy MacGregor, then goes through the contents of a trunk in an attic where he finds a picture of his father and an old folder. From the papers in the folder we are supposed to deduce that his father was an archeologist who was killed because he had discovered a map to a lost civilization. I guess the late Mr. MacGregor was a graduate of the Indiana Jones School of Archeology.

Troy then brings the map and picture downstairs and displays them in his room. He makes a futile call to Information to find out where his father's former partner, Mike Pipper, is. His aunt, played by Mrs. Costanza, arrives with a snack and berates Troy for wanting to know about his father's death.

Next we get a brief scene with a pudgy guy and his lousy, old, beat-up truck in what is perhaps the greatest use of inferior automotive engineering ever in a movie.

Back at the house, Troy has fallen asleep over a textbook after a hard night of trying to decipher the map. I would like to take this time to point out that this kid has absolutely no idea what this map is supposed to point to and has no way to translate the symbols. In fact, it doesn't even look like a map. It looks like something that would be painted on the walls of a southwestern restaurant. But that's okay -- he can do it, because he's the Hero.

While Troy is enjoying cold pizza, we see some of the thugs creeping around his house. One of them tries to climb in a window, where he is foiled by Troy and his baseball bat that just happened to be lying in the kitchen. Another thug begins to cut a hole in the front door. Troy grabs the map and runs into the basement just before the odd-looking man from the beginning (who isn't quite so odd-looking now because he got a haircut) comes in and demands that Troy give him the map.

I now pause for the obvious question: How did the odd-looking man know that Troy had found the map? Did he have a microscopic GPS attached to it? But that doesn't matter -- he knows, because he's the Villain.

Troy escapes from the house and rides off on his ten-speed. The thugs chase him in a car. They never catch up to him. Troy abandons his bike and climbs into the back of a lousy, old, beat-up truck that happens to be going past. The thugs, who have since abandoned their car (good decision), give up and leave.

Wait a minute...old truck, coincidental meeting...yes, it must be the long-awaited Meeting of Our Heroes!

The truck stalls a few miles down the road, and the pudgy guy discovers Troy hiding in the back. He lets Troy ride with him until he can find a phone. Who is this pudgy man? Why it's Rowsdower...Zap Rowsdower. Somehow, I don't think that line attracts the ladies as much as 007's introductory line.

Zap finds a pay phone at a gas station and calls the police. The thugs return and notice the truck. Troy sees them and speeds off, leaving Zap to climb into the bed and fend off the bullets with his amazing collection of beer bottles. When the thugs are thwarted, the truck stalls (how convenient), and Troy tells Zap the Story So Far. Zap tries to convince Troy to go home and forge the map, but no, Troy wants to find out where the map leads. So they bed down for the night. Somewhere in this conversation, Zap tells us that the thugs are part of a cult that wants to bring back a lost civilization or something equally pointless.

Next morning Our Heroes try to start the truck, but of course it won't budge. So Zap sends Troy off to find water. On the way, Troy sees three lumps of burlap that look just like something on the map. Zap finds Troy, and they both go off in search of the Mystery of the Map.

My brain shut down around this point, so I'm not too clear on what happened next. Somehow the thugs found Zap and started chasing him, while Troy fell into a hole and found his father's notes. While he was translating the symbols on the map, Zap was captured by the thugs and taken to the Villain. After some menacing dialogue, the Villain reveals that Zap was once a member of the cult by ripping Zap's shirt to reveal an hourglass tattoo on his shoulder. Gasp! Oh wait, he was kicked out. I guess he forgot to pay his dues.

Zap escapes from the thugs and gets a shotgun. Watch when he shoots it -- it's obvious he's never even held one before. Troy hides from the thugs and reunites with Zap. He sees the hourglass on Zap's shoulder and is horrified. Oh, right, Zap was kicked out, so I guess it's okay. They resume the chase and hide out in a rickety old cabin. The thugs come in, trash the place, fall through the floor, and leave.

Our Heroes emerge from their hiding place and find some "FOOD!" A grizzled old prospector comes out of the attic and threatens them. It's all right, though, once he finds out who Troy is. Yes, this is the late Mr. MacGregor's former partner Mike Pipper. I missed the next few minutes because I was laughing so hard. This guy sounds like Yosemite Sam, and he's supposed to be a respected archeologist?

Yosemite Mike helps Troy solve the mystery of the map by drawing an hourglass on it while Zap worries that the Villain might find them. The other two ignore him and go to bed after a brief discussion of Zap's possible role in the death of Troy's father.

But before that, Yosemite Mike tells Our Heroes some more about the lost civilization, the Ziox (Zeeox?). Apparently they settled Canada before the Indians and founded a Great City. Then they annoyed their god, who sent lots of rain and made the ground so marshy that the city sank. Now here's the really confusing part: If the city returns (which is what the Villain wants), that's supposed to be a good thing, yet the whole time, everyone is running around trying to keep the Villain from succeeding. Confused? Stand in line.

That night, while the Villain draws with a stick, Zap dreams of his initiation in the cult. This consists of him being tied to a post while three thugs brand him with the hourglass symbol. I think the director was trying to make this scene parallel the Crucifixion in an attempt to get us to feel sorry for Zap, but it really doesn't work. While all of this is going on, the hourglass drawn on the map catches fire.

Zap wakes up screaming and clutching his arm. I could have done without that. Yosemite Mike shows up and tells him that Troy was captured by the cult last night. If he knew that, then why didn't he STOP THEM?! Because that job is best left up to the Hero, of course. So Yosemite Mike gives Zap a horse and a gun (where was he keeping the horse?) and fades back into film obscurity.

Zap rides off to find the cult. He sees a few thugs wandering around, so he gets off the horse to follow them. He then leaves the horse in the woods by itself to follow the thugs. Um. Is that really a good idea when you're planning to be shooting in every direction? Don't you want to at least send the horse back? Then follows a long, pointless chase up a mountainside interspersed with scenes of Troy struggling with the thugs who kidnapped him.

Twelve hours later, Zap finds Troy tied to a post near another post that has the head of a man-cow on top. The Villain is also there, so Zap drops his gun, gives Troy a pocketknife and heads off for the Final Showdown. The Villain's choice of weapon is a flaming club. Zap chooses a grappling hook. Both just happened to be lying around.

While the Villain and Zap battle it out, Troy cuts the rope holding him to the non-cow-headed post and picks up the gun Zap dropped. He fumbles with it for a bit. Back at the battle, Zap has dropped his hook (man just can't hold on to anything, can he?) and has fallen over. The Villain steps on the hook so Zap can't get it. He raises the burning club over his head, muttering something about Zap being the "final sacrifice" when BANG! Troy figured out how to work the gun. The Villain turns around to face him, and we see that his back is on fire. Those must have been some bullets.

So the Villain dies and the cow-headed post falls over. A bright light shines out of the forest, and the thugs take off their ski masks as they walk towards it, symbolizing that they are tired of this movie and want to go home. Troy and Zap notice that the city is rising out of the ground while a voice-over from Yosemite Mike reminds us that this is a *good* thing. As the lost city flies away, Zap glances down and sees that his hourglass tattoo is gone. Yeeee-ha!

The movie leaves us wondering with a scene of Zap and Troy driving off into the distance. You can tell that this is supposed to be a happy ending, because the truck doesn't break down.

Rating: 4.75 turkeys.