Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
PG-13
1 hour, 55 minutes
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Gemma Arterton, Ben Kingsley, and Alfred Molina
Sweet! Another video game made into a film! Tit’s difficult not to role your eyes at the concept alone. Generally, it hasn’t gone well in the past. Regardless, I had extremely high hopes for this movie. If I had to pick one movie genre to watch for the rest of my life it would be the Action/Adventure. There is something about it that I love and can’t fully explain.
Sadly, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is officially one of the most painful movies I have ever had to sit through. Rarely do I have the urge to get up and leave a movie (that’s apart of my pride), but within the first 30 minutes I wanted to walk out and that urge stayed with me through the duration of the film. There isn’t a whole lot of this movie that actually makes sense. The production value was awesome, some of the fight scenes were cool, the acting was okay, but it was ultimately sloppy story telling (at its best) and nearly incoherent. The ending, literally made not an ouch of sense.
Was there even a script for this movie? It felt as if the entire movie was made off of a rough outline. The plot and the characters were so sorely underdeveloped it was difficult to form a true emotional connection to the characters and what they are trying to achieve, much less make sense of the character motivations and what was driving the story. The dialogue was aweful and obvious. It served no other purpose than to give blunt exposition. The rule of thumb, “Don’t tell me, show me,” was thrown to the wind.
I was expecting, as I’m sure Disney was too, the new Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. Prince of Persia couldn’t be further from the greatness of Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl if it tried. That sad part is that it had all the makings of a good film. Jake Gyllenhaal was absolutely lovable as the male lead and would easily be able to carry a series of films as the Prince. However, the idea of going into future ventures is not going to happen. The film was mediocre at best and with terrible numbers at the box Disney would not be able to justify addition installments.
My suggestion? Skip this movie all together.
1.5 out of 5
This definitely saved me from wasting my money. I had high hopes for the movie, but now I really don’t want to see it. It sounds… painful.
Surprised to hear the Gyllenhaal was a good Dastan, though.