The last time I remember us getting a big Disney live-action franchise, we got Pirates of the Caribbean...a neat first movie that overstayed it's welcome. Now, we're getting the Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. Jake Gyllenhaal is supposed to be Persian, and for some reason, has a in-and-out British accent in the film. Oookay... Well, it was pretty much what I expected...which isn't all that good.
Okay, let's start first with the positives. There are some neat things in this movie. I liked the Hasassins (sp?), and that they seemed to be magical assassins, not just run-of-the-mill run up and kill you guys. I liked the knifethrower, and his big code of honour. I liked the cinematography. I liked Gyllenhaal, more or less. I'm not sold if he has the ability to be a big action star, but at least he seemed to try. The set decorations, and the costumes were pretty good, as well.
Okay, that was the good. Let's go to the bad. Firstly the action scenes are once again, unwatchable. I'm tired of this. I'm going to send a letter to Hollywood, with 5 Hong Kong movies, and tell them that until they start filming action this way, I'm gone. It's terrible. What makes it even worse is that there was parkour coreographed by David Belle (The District 13 guy), that looks good, but the swordfighting is just atrocious. I couldn't see a bloody thing, and you know what, enough. I'm not going to be buying movies if the action is ass. Secondly, I didn't like Gemma Arterton, the female lead. The first half of the movie, I wanted to gag her, and then she seemed okay, but even when she was supposed to be all good, and everything, she still gave Gyllenhaal these haughty looks, like she wanted to bitch at him. They tried the whole love story thing with them, but it didn't work, mostly because her and Gyllenhaal have absolutely no screen chemistry. None. Zip. Zero.
Now let's get to the story. I'm watching this movie, and not everything is making sense (i.e. the characters just seem to know where to go, and there's this hourglass, and blah, blah, blah, the movie really didn't need to be 2 hours long, for the story we got). That being said, the movie was pretty ballsy with what it was doing, and where it was going until the end. Then we got Cop Frigging Out City. In a Disney movie, of course. I was not surprised, but I reflected that in the hands of a more risk-taking company, this film's story would have been pretty good. Not Disney, though. Nope, we get homogenized crap at the end of our stories from the Mickey Mouse studio. So, that was disappointing, especially when they went against their own logic in the story to provide us the Cop Out. Zeus coming down and being the big Deus Ex Machina would have been more believeable. I called the happy ending though, so like I said, I wasn't surprised, but disappointed.
Which is what I think of the whole movie. Look, Prince of Persia has some fun parts, some neat parts, and it had potential. Lots of potential. Unfortunately, in the end, it doesn't work, and that's too bad. We had a poor comic relief character (Alfred Molina), we had the craptacular happy ending that was really forced, we had the love affair that felt forced, we had the really badly filmed action...it's not longer acceptable, not by my standards, and it shouldn't be by anyone else's standards, either.
Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars.
I bid thee a fond goodnight.
- Stephenstein
First, I agree with your positives. Except for the love of the main character. What I don't get is why a Persian prince has a British accent. Maybe I was the only one that heard it, but his voice drove me nuts.
ReplyDeleteThe dislikes I have a little problem with. What I don't think you completely get is how video games work with RPGs like this. The beginning is all "training" where they advance the first part of the story by tie-ing it in with a drawn out walk through of the controls. So to tell the story properly - yea, there has to be a long intro.
I do agree the ending was balls. There was no /boss/ fight, just some chump fight. To a video game standard anyway. And a wedding, for real? I almost puked.
Yes, the fight scenes are quick but... (Sidenote: I do agree these quick cut scenes are starting to piss me off, I will walk out with you when you go) But in this game, that's mostly the game. Stab Stab Cut Parry Stab Stab - then when there is one guy left, get fancy.
All I'm saying is that (ignoring the ending) I felt like I was playing the game without a controller. I liked that. I figure that for a video game cross over, it matched it pretty well. For a movie, well, all movies do need good endings. I'd of added extra sand tanks, one to a push was lame.
I'd bump that score +1.