Prince of Persia: Sands of Time is Inappropriately Funny

May 23, 2010 — 2 Comments

There, I said it.

Look, I love Jakey G. but Prince of Persia was a joke. This is coming from someone who isn’t even a hardcore fan of the video game. Yeah, I used to play it on my cousin’s computer back in DOS system. LOL

Below the break, possible spoilers~ you’ve been warned.

Sands of Time introduces Dastan as a kid living in the streets saving another street kid from being punished by the King (Sharaman) ‘s men… so of course, the King sees something special in him and takes him home. Flash forward years, and Dastan — now a hot-looking Prince — and his brothers are about to take on a city that is supposed to be dealing weapons to the Persian’s enemies [hint: weapons of mass destruction].

In their looting, Dastan gets a dagger… THE Dagger (with capital D), which the princess of the city, Tamina, was trying to protect. After the murder of his father the King, Dastan is accused of being the perpetrator, and flees the city with Tamina as sort of hostage and help… but of course, Dastan didn’t do it! So he must clear his name, with the help of the Dagger, which uses some magical sand to turn back time.

Unlike the poster (and set of posters), Sands of Time looks very orange. It actually starts with a full shot of a sunrise — or was it a sunset set backwards? — anyway, it was all very reminiscing of Aladdin, so I began singing Arabian Nights in my head… or maybe I did a bit out loud. The caption, set in Papyrus, said something like two people linked together in time — I thought they might have been talking about KidDastan and the other street kid, but seeing as the other kid was left behind when Dastan was adopted… alas, it’s probably Dastan and the Princess whose city he’s about to ransack.

All the title screens with the names of the cities were set in that Papyrus style (at least they weren’t subtitles), with orange and yellow — to be honest, it was very distracting… as I can’t for the life of me remember the name of the city they were supposed to be looting. And I even tried looking up the name, but it’s late… so I don’t want to bother.

When Dastan and the Persians get to where the princess is praying, they take her and uncover her face… and because everyone is so impressed with her beauty, they all WOAH in unison. And Tamina is sassy, she speaks back and is a pain for Dastan who’s trying to clean his name.

Insert Sheik Amar (Alfred Molina) who lives in a place known for being full of murderers and bandits, but he essentially tells us is all PR, because he just doesn’t want the Persians snooping around and ask him for tax money. All he cares about is Anita, and the other ostriches he has for setting up ostriches races…

Molina gets a lot of the funny lines, but he eventually just works as an enabler of men power with Seso (Steve Toussaint), who happens to be pretty big and good with knives-throwing. And, oh Sir Ben Kingsley! Why are you always the bad guy in movies now? Is it because Gandhi was too much of a pacifist?

Acting wasn’t necessarily bad, but the dialog was just too much to take it seriously. The effects didn’t help either. They were average, and sometimes bordering on cartoon-y. Moreover, all this grandeur than thou action sequences are just so blown out of proportion, it’s just tiring.

Like I have stated on my Facebook movie updates…
Inappropriate boobs on secret statues… hot tamale and Anita the ostrich. Holy schmock, Gandhi, Dr. Oct, and Jeff with his 8k names for “breasts”!

2.5/5 – one whole extra star because Jakey G. is still hot, and I did laugh a lot.

2 responses to Prince of Persia: Sands of Time is Inappropriately Funny

  1. As soon as I heard that Jaeky was cast for this I was "this movie is going to suck"
    I guess you are saving me my ten bucks!

Trackbacks and Pingbacks:

  1. personal.amy-wong.com – A Blog by Amy Wong. » Blog Archive » To Watch Until They’re 35 – Jake Gyllenhaal - May 31, 2010

    […] Born in Los Angeles, California on December 19th 1980, this 29-year-old actor shot to fame playing Jack Twist on Ang Lee’s award-winning Brokeback Mountain, opposite Heath Ledger, and fellows the 20 to Watch Michelle Williams and Anne Hathaway, earning himself nominations for Best Supporting Actor at the Academy Awards, the Screen Actors Guild, and several critic circles, as well as a win at the BAFTAs. He is also known for playing Donnie Darko on the cult hit by the same name, and can be currently seen on screens playing Prince Dastan on the live-action adaptation of the Prince of Persia video game called Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. […]

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