blandly generic

Rating: 5/10 (10 February 2011)

I only made it through the first half hour of this tedious action picture, so I can't say whether it picks up later on. But the characters were clichés, the story familiar, the action underwhelming (in spite of a couple of cool stunts).
What this is definitely not is the story from the video game. Those who say this is typical of what happens when you adapt a game don't realize exactly how well the Sands of Time game told its story. The game had a wonderful, Arabian Knights quality and a wonderful ending.
Of course, you can't just take the story from the game and make it into a movie. It's a very slight story filled out with a lot of action and puzzle solving, so the story would certainly have to be expanded. But rather than expanding the story, it was tossed out altogether, with nothing remaining except a few characters and locations and the time rewind gimmick. That in itself wouldn't be so bad if it had been replaced by something moderately interesting and original, but there doesn't seem to have been any good reason to toss out the original story in favor of this one.
I can't say the half hour I spent watching this was agonizing. It was just dull, and felt like it was going to keep on being dull. Maybe I'm wrong, but it just wasn't worth wasting my time to find out.