After the success of Pirates of the Caribbean, it was inevitable that something would come along that would try to capitalize on Johnny Depp’s success. Enter Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. It has the whole swashbuckling, adventure, PG-13 appeal that audiences loved in POTC…at least the Black Pearl. But, as one would very much expect, it hardly lives up to it’s half-brother.
The story, basically, is that as a young child Aladdin…err…Dastan (played by Jake Gyllenhaal) does some fancy moves escaping from some guards (you know, one jump ahead…) and is rewarded by becoming a prince of Persia. He grows up into his ruggedly handsome, yet still Caucasian self, finds a dagger that rewinds a minute of time, picks up an annoying princess, and gets framed for his father’s murder. It was a long day. He then has to avenge his father, fall in love with the annoying princess, stop Armageddon, and stay Caucasian for the rest of the movie. It’s a long movie.
The problems are outstandingly long
and not-very complicated. The banter between Aladdin and Annoying Princess does not involve one little bit of chemistry or humor or real writing. There is no stirring musical score by Klaus Badelt (Sorry Harry Gregson-Williams. I don’t blame you.) The special effects seem created to just sorta pass themselves off as authentic. Ben Kingsley is forced to play yet another villain. The movie gets pretty boring near the middle part when everything stops so our characters can tell us a couple of really long stories in which the barely-passable special effects kick into as much drive as they have. Basically--the movie doesn’t have a Jack Sparrow and it suffers mightily for it.
I haven’t actually placed the Prince of Persia video games, but I’ve watched my brother play the second one. It seemed/seems to me that the joy of the game is in figuring out a way to get across a collapsing corridor or use the knife in an exciting way. That doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have its cinematic moments (I remember thinking it was pretty exciting), but the story was sometimes the means to awesome fighting. It reminds me of the Assassins Creed video games that way. There’s a pretty cool story behind everything, but some of the best parts of it are the cool swordplay/jumping/swinging parts. All this is to say that a lot of the excitement of the game is lost when it’s transferred to the screen. There’s something far less fun and exciting about watching Jake Gyllenhaal run around and figure things rather than you as a video game player.
By about an hour into the film, I had pretty much reached a “blah blah stuff is happening wait is that an ostrich?” mindset. I was pretty sure that Aladdin was going to win the day and kiss Annoying Princess and had long since given up hope that Johnny Depp was going to make a guest, surprise appearance. So I did what I always do when I felt obligated to at least finish the movie--I played Tetris.
Movie To Watch: X-Files: Fight the Future. Seriously. It’s epic.
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