If there was any film that had the potential to break the curse of the lackluster video game adaptation, it could have been "Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time." The PS2 game of the same name has a well-defined (though clearly "Aladdin"-inspired) aesthetic, an interesting McGuffin (a sand-filled dagger that reverses time), some cool visuals, plenty of running, jumping and climbing and not much of a story to speak of. That's where a strong screenwriter and a director with a sense of adventure would swoop in, tie all of the game's tried-and-true elements together with a fun story that clocks in at an hour and 45 minutes and let everyone enjoy their popcorn and go home.That's not what happened here.
Here we have a film from the writers of "Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights," "The Uninvited" and "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" and directed by Mike Newell, who gave the world "Mona Lisa Smile" and the shockingly forgettable "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire." This movie isn't fun, it isn't clever, it isn't cool -- hell, it's not even so bad it's entertaining. No, it just plain sucks.
Frankly, dear reader, I don't even know where to begin. This movie is bad in so many ways, it would be quicker and less painful for me to list the ways in which this thing doesn't suck. But no, that would be letting it off easy.
I know, let's start at the beginning: you know how you can tell when a screenwriter lacks the basic fucking skills that it takes to tell a simple story? When a movie opens with on-screen text, followed by narration, followed by an opening flashback sequence, that are all, for lack of a better word, pointless. The text is all about the power of destiny, but when you're making a movie about how you can just rewind time whenever something that you don't like happens, destiny doesn't really enter into the equation. And then the narration and opening sequence tell us that the beloved king of Persia (I didn't know Persia had kings, but whatever) was not content with his two biological sons that were produced by their never seen or mentioned mother, and so he just went out into the street one day and adopted the first acrobatic street rat he saw. Umm... why? It's never explained, so I would say it doesn't matter, but that would then make the first 15 minutes of the movie pointless, wouldn't it?
Look, I could go through the entire movie like this explaining why it's stupid, but I hope you get the idea. Jake Gyllenhaal is fine as the Prince, I guess, but he simply cannot salvage this material. And likewise, Gemma Arterton is drop-dead, eyes-shooting-out-of-my-head, whistle-blowing, smoke-out-of-my-ears gorgeous in this, but she happens to be stuck in a crap movie, which is ultimately too bad. Still, I was grateful whenever she was on screen, because then at least I could be distracted from the dumbness that was coming at me from all angles. And Alfred Molina and Ben Kingsley probably got paid a whole lot of money for putting on eye-liner and some spray-on tanner and getting to ham it up, so more power to them.
But, while we're talking about the performances, let's talk about the ways "Prince of Persia" is perhaps too faithful to its source material. Remember how in the game everyone, despite being from the Middle East, spoke in a British accent? Yeah, they do that here. In fact, with the exception of Gyllenhaal, the entire principle cast here is English, and the only one among them who attempts to change their voice at all is Gyllenhaal, and he's trying way too hard to sound English.
But, on the whole, this movie does borrow incredibly liberally from the world of video games, just not the one that inspired it. There are shots, ideas, sets, entire sequences, which were taken straight out of "Assassin's Creed." At one point, during one of many, many, many, many rooftop chases involving Gyllenhaal's character, I leaned over to Tara and asked why the Prince didn't simply hide in a pile of hay, because that's what you do in "Assassin's Creed" to get out of that exact same situation.
Oh, and this movie isn't content simply ripping off other games. I'll let you discover this act of plagiarism for yourself (if you dare!) but at one point in the movie Tara and I simultaneously looked at each other and said, "But in Latin, Jehovah starts with an I!" Yeah, they go there.
In the interests of time and brevity, let me just give you a quick rundown of some of the other stupid shit that happens in this movie. And I swear, I am not making any of this up:
- There's a major subplot involving ostrich racing.
- Alfred Molina gets to make a couple of dick jokes in what is supposedly a kids' movie.
- There's a secret group of assassins called aSANDsins. Seriously. Not kidding.
- The CGI in this movie is nothing short of embarrassing for Disney. There are evil snakes which do the bidding of the aSANDsins and look worse than the snake in "Anaconda," which came out over 10 years ago. Plus, these "snakes" make noises that sound like a combination of a chimpanzee and a bird. And whenever Gyllenhaal's character is supposed to be doing an acrobatic stunt and filmed from afar, he looks alternately like a cartoon character and an action figure.
- Two characters are talking in a desert (this actually happens a lot). An establishing master shot shows the weather conditions to be just fine and dandy. They cut to close-ups for two lines of dialogue. Then it's back to a master shot, which now shows a sandstorm roughly the size of the Manhattan skyline about 50 feet away. The characters treat this like it's no big deal.
- You know that magic time-reversing dagger? It's explicitly stated that it only holds enough sand to rewind one minute of time. But the sand is used up fairly quickly towards the beginning of the movie. It's refilled once, and then used pretty much at the characters' will for the rest of the movie, the whole "this thing only holds one minute of time-reversing sand" presumably thrown out the window.
- (SPOILERS FOR THIS ONE) You know that dagger? Yeah, at the end of the movie one character uses it to rewind the action of the entire film, bringing us back to the beginning and making the whole viewing experience, you know, entirely pointless. (SPOILERS OVER NOW!)
Before I go, I'd like to mull over the film's politics for a minute. On one hand, the hero has severe reservations about preemptively invading a city that may be manufacturing weapons for his empire's enemies, and in general seems to be arguing for reason and discussion while jumping off ledges and stabbing people. On the other hand, the film's supposed comic relief character spouts nothing but Tea Party talking points about the evils of government, especially where taxes are concerned. So, does this film lean hard left or hard right? I'd say it leans both ways so carelessly that it's sure to offend those from both sides, but I think the audience that flocks to see this movie will be too dumb to notice.
Case in point: Remember those on-screen titles I mentioned before? Well, when I saw this at a sneak-preview screening in Ocean County on Tuesday night, there was a woman behind me who had to read those five sentences or so out loud to herself, and aside from that pesky reading junk, she seemed to love this movie. In fact, most of the audience I saw this with loved this, disconcertingly so. They ate this shit up like me at a sushi buffet. But me, I just hated it, and I mourn the cool movie it could have been.
Avoid this at all costs.
