Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time: The Movie

Mediocre, adequate, forgettable, disposable, uninspired, unimpressive, etc.  I have plenty of adjectives that perfectly describe the predictably dull May Blockbusters that come along every year.  It seems to me that every year around late spring Hollywood manufactures a new crop of rehashed action films that entertain for maybe an hour, and then are rightfully completely forgotten.  For some reason, its specifically this exact season when movies reach their low ebb for the year.  Last year I struggled though such brainless movies as "X-Men Origins:  Wolverine", "Terminator Salvation", and "Star Trek", and this year now I get "Iron Man 2", and "Prince of Persia".  What will come next year?  I have no idea, but if history is any judge, I should stay well away from the theatre until mid-June at least.

So what is there to say about "Prince of Persia"?  Nothing.  Nothing at all.  I'm not disappointed, I'm not pleasantly surprised, I'm not shocked, wowed, entertained, infuriated, frustrated, or excited after watching this movie.  I'm just bored.  And so is everybody else it seems, because this movie's sales are lower than what Disney wanted out of this production.  Not disastrously lower, because that would be halfway interesting.  No, just about ten million less than they wanted.  The movie will make a slight profit in the end, everybody involved will live on to make more movies, but there will be no sequel.  And that's the end of the story.  Not a bang, not even a whimper.  Just plain boring fact.

You could argue that when compared to other video game adaptations that "Prince of Persia" is of unusually good quality.  I don't really buy that argument, since there have been halfway decent video game movies before ("Resident Evil"), and there will be more in the future.  Despite the genre's ill-luck, it isn't cursed.  "Prince of Persia" is not breaking new ground by simply not being completely horrible like "House of the Dead", "Mortal Kombat", "Super Mario Bros.", and countless other awful video game movies in the past.  All of those movies had the ability to at least be okay.  So don't get excited, there isn't anything to see here.

The action sequences might be impressive if you haven't seen a movie in about twenty years, the storyline is unimaginative, most of the characters are purely plot devices - existing without a shred of personality or character beyond the role they must play in the storyline, the jokes fall flat, and the ending is a ridiculous deus ex machina*.  Also, if you're at all surprised that the villain turns out to be the sinister-eyed bald old man with a beard, I have a sandbox in Florida to sell you.  The main relationship between the Prince Dastan** and Farah Princess Tamina is still as clever and entertaining as it was the game... for what bits the movie let's you see that.  There's nothing the movie stars can bring to that central relationship that the game's voice actors hadn't already created.  And since the movie's plot is many times more complicated than the game's, you can forget seeing very much of the lead roles, as they're swallowed whole by action sequences and lame special effects.  Its all so adequate.  I get the feeling that nobody really believed in this movie beyond just the product and the ultimate profit.  Maybe a few heroic members of the cast and crew tried to make more out of this movie than just another Blockbuster, but their stalwart efforts were devoured by a culture of adequacy.

There's a minor recurring meme of modern Terrorism and other political issues*** being applied to the story, but it doesn't seem to really affect the storyline or have any real purpose.  No real substantiative political argument is ever made so I really do not know why any of this was even included.  Perhaps the movie was attempting to seem more intelligent by making political commentary.  Though that doesn't really fit with the feel of the rest of the film which is just pure fantasy cinema without a hint of anything even slightly challenging to the audience.  Probably none of it means anything at all.  Its movies like this that create cynics in teenagers who could so easily lose their faith in the magic of film making.

Ultimately here's what you're looking at:  two hours of mediocre entertainment for $10 a ticket and another $11 for popcorn and soda.  Though I'd like to save you some money, so here's an idea:  instead, go down to GameStop, check the bargain bin and find a used copy of "Prince of Persia:  The Sands of Time" for the PS2 or Gamecube or whatever.  I got my copy last year for five bucks, and despite being a video game, it was twenty times the movie this thing is.  And its a lot more fun.

Just watch out for the elevator at the end of the game.  I could never get past that part.

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* I'll admit that the original game kinda ended on a slightly contrived note, but at least it wasn't a silly "let's restart the plot so that nothing bad ever happened so everybody can live happily ever after" kind of ending.  At least the game's ending left enough conflict around so that two sequels could be made.  Uninspired movies get uninspired endings, I guess.

** There's been some controversy that the Prince of Persia is quite obviously played by a White guy in Jake Gyllenhaal.  I guess this sort of fits the video games in that the Prince there was oddly Caucasian-looking.  The movie itself tries to explain this by making the Prince a street rat who has been inexplicably adopted by the royal family.  But even then the royal family is filled with a high variety of English Persian actors such as Ben Kingsley, Ronald Pickup, Toby Kebbell, and Richard Coyle.  Not-Farah is played by Gemma Arterton (Miss Fields in the last James Bond movie), who also just oozes with authentic mid-Eastern quality, right?  Its made even better by the fact the make-up artists can't seem to decide just how dark their very English actors should be.  Gyllenhaal is using his natural color, Kebbell actually might pass for Persian, Kingsley looks like a "300" extra", and Coyle just seems to have a tan.  And these guys are supposed to be related?

People are probably just overacting when they accuse this movie of "white-washing", especially since nothing about this movie seems to be based upon any semblance of historical fact or real Persian culture.  I can't even place what time period this movie is supposed to be occurring in - though map of the Persian Empire makes it seem like the Achaemenid period, every other detail is completely anachronistic to fifth century BC.  (For example, Turks are mentioned, yet there would be no groups of people recognizable as Turkish for at least another 1000 years or more.  I can name plenty more, being a History major, but I'll hold myself back.)  The film makers just didn't care about either historical or ethnic accuracy.  The games didn't either, thus the English accents.  And neither should you care.  Nothing about this movie is worth getting angry over.

*** Early on in the movie the Persians invade a city because supposedly the city is making weapons.  Turns out they were mislead by evil Ben Kingsley.  There never was any WMDs were there?  That subtext is a little faint, I'll admit, but its definitely there.  Later on the comic relief explicitly complains about how high taxes destroy the small business owners - using those exact terms!   And then there's a debate whether or not the Prince is too dangerous to even have a trial, conjuring memories of America's on-going Guantanamo Bay fiasco.  Of course the movie never really answers of these issues it brings up half-heartedly and none of them really belong in the story at all.  Perhaps all this was supposed to be some of kind of low level satire for some laughs.  Ultimately I am beyond confused at this recurring political issue here.

Then again, I don't understand why so many people worked so hard, spent so much, poured so many resources into a movie that has all the emotional depth of a mere roller coaster, so you can see that there are a lot of questions I cannot answer.  If only this project was more honest with itself and instead resulted in an actual roller coaster.  (sigh)