“Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time” is based on a video game. The good news is, now that it’s out on DVD, you can hit a button while you’re watching it – the ‘stop’ button.
Jake Gyllenhaal, serious actor turned action hero, plays Dastan, a street orphan who is adopted by the king of Persia. He and his two brothers help the King and his brother (played by Ben Kingsley) rule the land.
Dastan is wrongly accused of killing the king and so he must run away or be killed himself. He’s joined by the princess of a neighboring country because…otherwise there wouldn’t be a story. Also, there’s this dagger that everybody wants because if you press a button on it you can turn-back time. Kinda like a replay button on a video game controller. Oh, and the dagger can also destroy the world.
Where do I begin to describe why this movie doesn’t work: It starts (as usual) with the story, which just isn’t interesting enough. For an action movie there’s an incredible amount of dialogue, most of it is the characters explaining to each other what’s going on and why their doing what they’re doing.
The are also plenty of fighting scenes, but nothing original. The editing is very choppy and the use of slow motion is totally unnecessary. Overall, the special effects look a little cheap and cheesy.
There are a lot of close-ups of Gyllenhaal, but neither he, nor Gemma Arterton, who plays the princess, are very believable. She was also in “Clash of the Titans”, and so that makes her “0 for 2” this year. Alfred Molina plays a sheik who runs ostrich races. In one scene he actually kisses one of his ostriches. That’s one of the few things I’ll remember from “Prince of Persia”.
Several times during the film, while trying to stay awake, I kept asking myself – is this a movie that Walt Disney would have liked to have his name on? Every time the answer was NO!
“Prince of Persia” is rated PG-13 for the action-violence, and there’s plenty of it, as you would expect from a Jerry Bruckheimer film. But, overall, the movie is pretty tame for PG-13. Normally that would be a good thing, but I can’t recommend that any kids see this film, because it’s simply not entertaining.
If you put “The Mummy”, the “Indiana Jones”, and the “National Treasure” movies together, and added a touch of “Aladdin”, you’ve got “Prince of Persia: The Sand of Time”. The problem is it’s not as good as any of the films in those other series, and there are no magic carpet rides.
On The Official Kid Critic Report Card, “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time” gets a D. Another big-budget summer film that turned-out to be more BUST than BLOCKBUSTER.