Thursday Night at the Movies - Prince of Persia The Sands of Time

We've been seeing the trailers for this seemingly forever. It looked pretty incomprehensible but fun so we went to see it. As is the case for most summer blockbuster movies, this movie is pretty much review proof. You either like this sort of movie or you don't and even a review titled "The Prince of Pointless" as our local paper had it, isn't going to stop you. In case you're wondering, Thursday actually occurred on Tuesday this week.Besides, the movie has that dreamy Jake Gyllenhaal and the lovely Gemma Arterton. I've never heard of Arterton although apparently she was in Clash of the Titans which I wanted to see but couldn't convince anyone else in my family to see ("Release the kracken" is my favorite movie trailer quote of all time).

Prince was pretty entertaining even if much of it didn't make any sense. There is a lot of lovely photography, although I suspect most of it was actually CG. Certainly, no place like the Holy City actually exists.

The plot in a nutshell is this: boy attacks and conquers girl's city, boy get girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl, ostrich race, big snakes, boy loses girl, boy gets girl but then she dies. Boy, with the help of his evil uncle, unleashes the sands of time, bringing girl back to life (and incidentally undoing the entire movie) but girl doesn't remember boy, boy gets girl.

Here is my problem with the movie, and maybe this is actually a problem with any movie that is based on some other media (if you don't know you probably don't care, but this movie is based on a video game). There is no suspense in this movie, where you might expect there to be at least some. Anyone who knows the video game, knows (SPOILER ALERT) the king's brother (boy's uncle) is the bad guy. I never played the video game and I suspect there are a few people who haven't. The fact that the uncle is the bad guy is revealed in the trailer, however. Maybe I'm just cranky but I think this leads to bad film making. As the film progresses, there is absolutely no indication that the attack on the holy city was orchestrated by the uncle so he can get control of the magic dagger so he could turn back time and make himself king (instead of his wise brother). The uncle is revealed as the bad guy by a stunning leap of logic by Dustan (Gyllenhaal's character), a leap as stunning as the many leaps he makes over buildings, camels, and crumbling temples. Sorry, that's just lazy film making.

Next week we're going to see Killers even though it has Ashton Kutcher in it. It also has Katherine Heigl.