Good fun, even for non-fans of the genre

Rating: 8/10 (16 June 2010)

OK, let me start by saying that I am not a person who likes fantasy movies, I am not a person who likes action movies and I have never in my life played a computer game (not counting Patience and Spider Solitaire). I do however like me some Jake Gyllenhaal and when I read that for this movie he had trained an additional 5 pounds of muscle onto his body AND that he speaks with an English accent, I knew I had to see it, if only to swoon for two hours. So I admit I went in for completely shallow reasons.
As for the shallowness, I was amply rewarded. My oh my that Jake looks good!! And I really loved him with his English accent - I certainly hope he will do that more often. For those leaning more towards enjoying female beauty there is Gemma Arterton who is a stunning beauty so they were quite the handsome couple.
But all in all I was pleasantly surprised by the movie. It had a good story to it, the acting was steady, the tone was humorous and the CGI people went all out for the lush scenery and the crowd scenes. Two additional reasons that I thoroughly enjoyed it were: (1) Alfred Molina who provided the humour bits in his role of Sheik Amar (I sat through the end credits because he was unrecognizable to me and I wanted to know who played the part. What a 180 degree turn from his part in An Education where I saw him last!), and (2) the use of parkour/freerunning we see Jake do in his role of Prince Dastan. Obviously he must have had a stunt double for this and some parts of it must have been enhanced by CGI but still it was a welcome change to the standard (to this genre of movie) chasing scenes which I am not particularly a fan of.
If - contrary to me - you are a fan of fantasy and action, you will enjoy this even more than I did, and I already enjoyed it very much. A couple of hours of unpretentious fun of the kind that Jerry Bruckheimer has such a knack for. Well done.