Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

Historically, film adaptations of video games have been horrible. Those of us who play games on a regular basis know this, but we hope for the best anyway, because we've devoted hours of our lives to these things. At this point, however, we're starting to suspect that Hollywood secretly HATES video games, because they insist on raping everything that was wonderful about them and relying on random slo-mo shots with physics that look goofy on film, even if they were necessary in the game reality.



Directed by: Mike Newell (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Mona Lisa Smile)
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Gemma Arterton and Ben Kingsley
Plot Summary: "Why does this look EXACTLY like Aladdin?"

Disney is great with animated children's movies, but they have major issues with live action. One of the problems, which is certainly the case with this particular kind of movie, is that they take material that deserves a stronger rating and water it down. One of the reasons Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl worked is because it was PG-13 (the very first PG-13 Disney movie, as a matter of fact); if it had been anything lower, it wouldn't have made sense. The same goes for Prince of Persia; it was PG-13, but wouldn't have been so bland (and awkwardly scripted, in several places) if it had been rated R. Which, of course, means that Disney shouldn't have made it in the first place, and should've passed it off to another studio instead.

Observations Made As We Watched:
--"Wanna know what's better than this movie so far? This Pop-Tart I'm eating."
--"LOOK at his ARMS! Hot DAMN!"
--"We should've counted how many times they got ambushed."
--"I'm impressed that Jake grew his hair out for this."
--"Holy f***, that was ham-fisted exposition."
--"Wait a minute... is that Papyrus font?! What, Disney ran out of money?"

"The video game character looks Arabic. You know who doesn't?"

(Note: For anyone who doesn't know where this movie's taking place, Persia is now Iran.)

A major peeve about ancient/medieval period pieces in non-British settings is that, for some inexplicable reason, everyone's rocking a British accent. It's even gotten to the point that "Back-in-the-Day English" has become an accent in and of itself (see Brad Pitt in Troy, Orlando Bloom in Kingdom of Heaven, Gerard Butler in 300, Colin Farrell in Alexander, etc). Ben Kingsley, Gemma Arterton and Alfred Molina were all born in England, but Jake Gyllenhaal was born in LA., and his struggle with the olden-times accent is apparent. He gets better as the movie goes along, leading us to believe that the movie was shot in sequential order (we can't prove this, but that's how it sounds). It makes no sense that studios spend millions upon millions of dollars to shoot in foreign locations and pay for detailed period costumes, but can't get dialect coaches.

This brings us to another weird stereotype in action: the supporting characters (and especially the villain, complete with eyeliner and evil goatee, played by the only headlining actor of Asian descent) are allowed to look Middle Eastern, but the protagonist has to be whitest guy in the room? Listen up, Hollywood: "Fall into a sand dune after exiting a tanning salon and not showering for a few days" is not a method for creating Iranian characters. We hate to nitpick, but seriously, look at this:

The Hero: A white dude with a good tan



The Resident Hot Girl: Doesn't look like she was born in England, so she's "exotic"



The Villain: Jafar?

The Best Part: Alfred Molina, as a merchant who runs plot-irrelevant ostrich races, was a fun addition to the storyline, if only for the fact that Molina makes every movie better. Ditto for Gemma Arterton, whose Princess Tamina was more than just fap-fodder for the teenage boys who went to see this movie. Her character was the best-written in the whole bunch, and on top of that, Arterton played her with fierce intelligence.

The Worst Part: Overwhelming blandness destroyed what could've been a badass movie, because this kind of material requires real commitment on the filmmakers' part (for example, 300 can be called several things, but bland isn't one of them). There's no reason a movie involving time travel, of all things, should've been predictable. And while Gyllenhaal's convincing as a rogue-ish hero, he's not convincing as an Iranian one.

We give Prince of Persia a D-.

(Poster and trailer © Walt Disney Pictures)