Lara Would Kick Sand in This Prince's Face

Rating: 2/10 (7 December 2012)

How Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time didn't end up as direct-to-DVD cartoon is beyond me.
It was, in fact, an all-but cartoon, with thousands, make that MILLIONS of CGI clips; it's almost like watching a cartoon. Now, that's so the (probably near-bankrupt) Disney can make a buck on something they probably weren't too sure of. Uh, like Mars Needs Moms? Too soon?
Now, it's not all bad. It's entertaining if you leave your brain on a magic carpet by the door, and know the source material. Only, I played thee original Prince of Persia – as early as 1989 and not the ho-hum remake of every other desert adventure that's out there. I've seen the previews – of the updated game that is – and a lot of shots of this movie version does look a lot like it. So, kudos to them for keeping with the (times and) video game.
But, it's also not all that good. What starts off with enormous plot elements thrown at us as well as what seems like 50 different locales that you're supposed to "get" up front, ends up with the age-old story, in an age-old Iran – formally Persia.
Oh, and before I go furthercan someone please remove the "SIR" before Ben Kingsley's name? Seriously, the ratio of bad movies to good outweighs the number of good Friday the 13th movies.
So Persia wants to rule the world and an "Aladdin"-type Dastan (Jake Gyllenhaal) is the adopted son of the King and has two brothers and an Uncle (unsir Ben Kingsley.) Side note: I would like to call this Uncle after another "Uncle" from another Disney classicbut that would be too much of a spoiler. Though, if you don't see that coming, you have never, ever seen a movie before, let alone played a video game beyond the Super Nintendo. (Heck, let's say the Sega Genesis.)
Anyways, King Daddy dies and Dastan is destined to be accused. Meanwhile, he's in possession of a switchblade (of sorts) thatwait for itcontrols the sands of time. Well, for a minute at least. Meanwhile, Princess Tamina (Gemma Arterton) wants the cutting-through-time knife back. And it does, in fact, go back and forth between the two leads so many times, you'd think this was Groundhog Day.
Oh, and the evil one(s) also want the sharpy thing. (See how I'm not taking this seriously?) And neither should the audience. The movie's just an excuse to throw cheesy (and obvious) CGI-controlled scenes at you in both rabid and slooo-mo (Also see: The Matrixwait, aren't we 12 years past yet another Matrix-rip-off?)
I'll repeat (one part, at least): It's not all that bad. It's entertaining enough just as mindless action, but with zero depth, originality or creativity. You can just watch it because there hasn't been an Indiana Jones, Mummy or Lara Croft reboot in the works recently. Speaking of which, Prince of Persia doesn't even come close to those movies (okay, maybe Lara Croft: The Cradle of Life and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull – it's certainly on par with those.) Heck, even the mostly-bland National Treasure movies are better.
And that's all too bad. You can tell Jake put his heart into this; I'm sure he worked out at the gym for more hours than he put in for Brokeback Mountain. But, sadly, he also put his time into a tired script with a truly foreseen finale that takes way too long to get to and yet another movie Kingsley phoned his performance in. Skip!