200 million dollars seldomly felt more boring on a big screen.

Rating: 5/10 (22 August 2010)

Trying hard to create another blockbuster-franchise, Bruckheimer and Disney fail to deliver the fun and exciting ride that was "Pirates of the Caribbean" and instead present a bland and uninspired flick that suffers from a patchy script, a detached protagonist, and a director who clearly lacks vision.
Jake Gyllenhaal is one of the biggest miscasts I have ever experienced in cinema. His clumsy and awkward interpretation of a swashbuckling, smooth-talking rough-rider is, at times, painful to watch. Every single mimic is an anxious and unconvincing copy of Harrison Ford's "Indiana Jones" and Gyllenhaals impressive physique only makes it more obvious that every bit of muscle was packed on to disguise a sensitive, shy and slightly awkward person as an action hero. It does not work, at all.
The script feels like it went through multiple re-writes of multiple authors. The bumpy story-telling and the many plot-holes suggest that either the film was changed (most probably shortened) significantly in post-production to put more focus on the action sequences or that whatever the story arcs had been originally was lost during extensive and multiple rewrite-sessions. Not only is there no character-development in either of the two main characters, their motivation and emotional status changes so rapidly and often between two scenes that the audience is most likely to give up caring about the people in the movie and concentrate on the beautiful set-pieces and well-choreographed stunts. One moment Gemma Artetons "Tamina" wants to kill Prince Dastan, 20 seconds later she is angry about him leaving her in the desert. One moment Tamina hates Dastan and his family for invading Alamut, a few seconds later she helps him to escape. It is confusing. And one more word to the premise of the story: whoever felt it necessary to include an end-of-the-world scenario into the story should be severely punished. It feels so horribly constructed and out of place that anybody with a talent for writing should have noticed it as soon as was written down.
All in all director Mike Newell was incapable to create a "whole" from the mix between an Arabian Nights story, well crafted action, romance and the occasional funny moments and one liners. The film is flawed on so many levels that the albeit properly worked out bits and pieces almost never connect to what could have been so much better.
Seldom did 200 million dollars feel more boring on a big screen.