Was OK overall but wouldn't watch again

Rating: 4/10 (28 December 2010)

I have not played the video game, so I may have not appreciated the movie as much as a video gamer would. Overall the movie was OK.
Before seeing the movie I wasn't convinced that Jake Gyllenhaal was the perfect choice for the role, but after seeing it, he did better than I expected and actually fit the role of Dasten well. The role of Tamina was alright, she was a strong woman but lacked a bit of emotion. Maybe that's what they were going for in her character. Nizim (Ben Kingsley) was alright as the villain. I didn't pin point that he was the bad guy right away. What I mostly remember was his dark eyeliner... I really like Alfred Molina, his character was supposed to be comic relief I assume? But his lines weren't really that funny. His sidekick Seso was great though, and I actually enjoyed that he got his own fight scene, meeting his match at the end.
The story itself was good overall, but there were too many bad one liners in the script, that did nothing for me. For example: Tamina: There must be a reason why you can't take your eyes off me. Prince Dastan: You're... I... I don't trust you. And you're not my type.
LAME! He could have really insulted her or said something funny, but they went with something boring. If you want us to like your main character, wouldn't he have said something more witty??
Anyways so the story itself was OK, but how did they choose (at the end) how far back the story would go? I thought for sure it would restart at the scene of the murder king.
Visually most of the action, cgi, location was great. I did have an issue with the editing though. It seemed that there were some bad cuts. There wouldn't always be a great establishing shot and multiple times a few characters seemed to appear out of no where.
There was also a bad transition where it was the same scene. Dastan is holding up the fat king and says to Tamina "couldn't you have found someone lighter" (or something like that). She says something back, the king throws nut shells in Dastans face. It was a funny scene. Then they quickly cut to a wide and then go back to the same shot which is suddenly a serious conversation. It just didn't seem to work. I still had the feeling of comedy there.
There were also a few action sequences which seemed to miss a shot or two. There was an action scene where Dastan falls down a hole. suddenly he was falling down the hole, but it was like you had to figure out what exactly happened. They seemed to miss the shot of him actually going through the entrance.
The action overall was enjoyable. I didn't mind that they over used a few slow mo action shots.
There was one other scene that bugged me, where Dasten and Tamina where having a normal conversation under a tiny sheet tent in the middle of a sandstorm?
Overall I think the editing seemed to fail the most. Now you may not exactly blame the editor, maybe it was the storyboard guy who you blame, who ever puts the scenes together, I dunno. The actors overall were good and story/script was OK.