Prince of Persia Review

Clearly I spent way too much time in Elementary school drawing pictures of the X-men on my book covers as I seem to have missed the part in History class where Persia was inhabited by white folk who spoke in British accents. Wait a tick! This is Hollywood magic, isn’t it? Oh ho, thought you could pull the wool over my eyes yet again did you greedy corporate film executives? Well I’m on to your tomfoolery!

Hoping to strike oil twice and smother our baby seal-like innocence like some BP prick, Disney has decided to spawn yet another Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Only this time around it takes place in the desert and Captain Jack Sparrow is an aging Doctor Octopus. I am of course referring to last weekend’s box office blunder, The Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.

For the uneducated, The Prince of Persia is a long running video game franchise, and while this is the kind of movie that brings back painful memories of that dream I had where I was Jody Foster in a room of pinball machines, I nevertheless went into the theaters with my head held high. This was Disney after all, and while Disney has spawned some atrocious things over the years, they have also proven themselves as a remarkably creative company. After all, any company that can take an amusement park ride and translate it into one of the most entertaining and memorable popcorn movies of the last decade can surely provide us with a video game movie adaptation that won’t have me burning out all those childhood memories of playing the game by inserting a sparkler into my ear. Right? Without beating around the bush, let me provide you with an answer. No – erm, maybe.

Saying that this was one of the best video game adaptations of all time isn’t necessarily a point in its favor, but that’s the general conclusion I arrived at. I realize that isn’t a very clear cut answer, and probably not the thing that a person wants to hear when they read a movie review. So I’ll tell you what, seeing as how I view myself as a professional in the same way a rodeo clown might be seen as a professional horse therapist, I’ll go into a bit more depth and try to excavate a more palatable critique.

The movie begins when a nation of ass-hats that might as well be an allegory for most contemporary war hungry titans, gee I wonder who that could be, storms a holy kingdom in an attempt to prevent them from manufacturing weapons for enemy states. Well surprise, surprise, turns out there were no weapons and the whole attack was issued to seize control of some sacred dagger that can turn back time. The perpetrator was Sir Ben Kingsley, and if you think I just spoiled the movie by revealing to you that Ben Kingsley was the antagonist then let me take this time to also spoil the fact that starting into the sun for extended periods may cause complications during future movie viewings. So after the invasion takes place Ben Kingsley’s brother, who is king, gets a nasty rash from his Pajamas and Jake Gyllenhaal, the street rat prince, has the blame placed squarely on his shoulders. Rather than put him on trial, the castle guards get the crafty idea of dropping a jet turbine on ol’ Jake, but seeing as how he seemingly survived that twice now they instead try to cut him down on the spot. Jake escapes, takes the princess of the castle with him, and the two embark on a quest to right what is wrong and stop the nefarious plot. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

Yes, we are looking at a pretty typical adventure movie, but that isn’t all bad. Most teachers will tell English students that the heart and soul of writing lies in the characters. If the audience can connect and feel compassion for the characters and their actions then congratulations, you have an engaging story. Sadly the characters are about as fresh and interesting as a bloated corpse with a television set on its back displaying Ben Stein detailing how the murder occurred.

The protagonist is played by Jake Gyllenhaal whom I haven’t seen in a while; no doubt coming back to the big screen to contend with the likes of the Gyllenhaal family Skeksis swamp hag, you know, the thing that was in The Dark Knight? I think it might be their pet or something. And to be fair, Jake gives a decent enough performance considering what he is being offered here. There is some sincerity to his deliverance and whenever possible I noticed a sliver of cleverness poking out of his chiseled pecks, but when you go over the whole thing with a fine toothed comb you notice that just like a prostitute’s soul, the character is completely nonexistent and that protrusion is just an erect nipple. He’s eye candy for the ladies to flick their bean to and fills the shoes of the young and daring prince rather well I must say.

Then there’s the female support who might as well be a cardboard cutout standing in a Suncoast video store. Admittedly she is round where it counts, if you catch my perverted drift; in fact, since I can’t remember her character’s name or her real life name, let’s just call her Tits. So Tits is some holy woman who is well trained in the protection of sacred artifacts, and by well trained I mean she has no combat or mystical techniques whatsoever and easily bends over for insertion once someone takes possession of her boon. That’s not all, she is also an isolated princess with no understanding of the outside world, hurray! I was starting to care about her. This archetype of the naive princess can be a lot of fun if you’re smart, unlike the screenwriter for this movie, but here it just comes off as boring and retarded. I half expected a scene with her staring into a pond trying to figure out why the palace servants would put water out in the middle of the desert. And of course, despite her absolute hatred of Jake Gyllenhaal she has a complete character reversal halfway through the movie and begins to fall for the lug; umm, consistency? People will correct me and try to tell me that this was some destined love thing based on future events of the movie, but I don’t buy it. Princess Tits goes from a hormonally PMS raging Velociraptor with sand up its clam to a swooning sleepy-eyed stereotype all because her kidnapper put his hand on hers. Never heard of Stockholm syndrome being used as an aphrodisiac before, but now that it’s on the table I think I’ll go ahead with my plot to kidnap Rihanna.

So with bland characters and an uninteresting plot the only thing left to fall back on is the action and set pieces, and surprisingly this is where the movie excels. Given the fact that this is a Disney movie, the budget definitely shows. The special effects are spectacular and what are most impressive are the locations and set pieces. Unlike a lot of movies these days that rely on CGing the whole damn thing, a lot of the sets have an authenticity to them. Most were filmed on location in beautiful desert vistas while others look like studio mock-ups that were hand crafted by master set designers. This actually wins the movie a few bonus points although to be fair it is still just sand and mountains most of the time giving the movie little color outside various shades of brown. This sort of color selection reminds me a lot of current generation video games and seeing as how this is based on the more recent Prince of Persia games this may in fact be a subtle homage. Clever. Oh wait, no; “horseshit” is what I meant to say.

Also, the movie pays respect to the video game by featuring several “free-running” scenes where the characters jump from roof to roof, scaffold to scaffold, silliness to kookiness, et cetera. In case you readers have fallen asleep the past few years, that real life sport of free running (designed by people in desperate need to collect on life insurance I guess) has got its fingers wrapped tightly around the neck of all platform action titles. People seem to forget that this sort of game play has actually existed as far back as pitfall and the original Prince of Persia titles in the ‘80s. For those of us who know we’ll just keep our mouths shut and let the kiddies continue to believe that glittering vampires are a good idea. Thankfully, these moments of the movie do well to pump the movie with some much needed excitement and action.

On a craftsmen’s level the movie holds up well outside of the glaring editing mistakes. This is most apparent in the early portions of the movie. Whoever was editing this must have been busy staring at his hand the whole time he was cutting between scenes. To say its jarring is like saying Uwe Bowl is a bad director, it’s damn obvious and defies logic as it seems like it would require a specific kind of talent or skill to be this bad.

On a final note, one thing that does beg to be mentioned is the time reverting element of the movie. Time traveling plots are always shaky as it eliminates any sort of tension that might exist in the movie. What’s the harm in someone dying when you can just go back, prevent said expiration and bonk the baddy over the head for being a dick? Luckily that is somewhat dispelled in this movie with the convenient plot device of fuel for the mystical time traveling dagger. Rather than have an unlimited supply of DeLorean juice, the dagger requires very specific sand which is in limited supply. As a result time traveling can only occur in short bursts and only happens maybe 4 times throughout the entirety of the movie. Here I was worrying that they’d be jumping back and forth as fast as a sugar-buzzed 5 year old with the taco shits trying to find the one working bathroom stall out of 100.

So again, returning to my original thoughts on the movie let me sum it up like this. Meh. The movie isn’t bad, it’s not great, it’s not really anything. By the time I left the theaters I was sure I had seen one of the best video game movies of all time, but being the best video game movie is a lot like being the best Sonic the Hedgehog game of the past decade: it’s not a particularly fascinating or challenging accomplishment, nobody cares, and the only thing it does is reminds people of the older source material that they could be spending their free time with. Still, the movie succeeds at being a big budget summer action flick and for that I can’t speak too harshly of it. But not to worry, any damage done by this movie can be erased with a magical time altering device called a cinder block which can be powered whenever I slam my face into it.