Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

Jake Gyllenhaal stars as Prince Dastan, who pairs with spunky Princess Tamina (Gemma Arterton) to keep the Sands of Time — a mystical dagger that gives its holder control over the flow of time — from falling into the wrong hands and putting the world in peril. Mike Newell directs this sweeping live-action adventure based on the popular video game series, co-starring Ben Kingsley and Alfred Molina. Directed by Mike Newell (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire).

Matt
Rating: 6 out of 10

Film adaptations of films just don’t work, and we’ve written about it before. I even ranked this film as one of the Top 5 movies you shouldn’t waste your money on last summer.

But I will say this — as stupid as this movie was, it was pretty fun. The concept isn’t great. It’s a film about a boy adopted into a royal family who is later framed for his father’s murder by his uncle, and while he is on the run finds a magic dagger that can bring you back in time one minute — throw in heavy doses of action, adventure, fights, and a hot chick. You get the formula.

This is not a good movie, but I’m not always in the mood for an intellectually challenging movie. Sometimes, I just want a movie to distract me from the hustle and bustle.

The Movie Brothers Podcast Episode 4

In this week’s podcast, The Movie Brother’s talk about the Top 5 Tim Burton movies, Danny DeVito’s “Housebroken,” Adam Sandler’s “Grown Ups,” Disney’s popcorn flick “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time,” talk Transformers: Dark of the Moon, and we trash Michael Cera.

Thanks for listening!

5 movies you shouldn’t waste your money on this summer

Brian

How do I know to avoid these films when I haven’t even seen them?  Let’s just call it intuition and personal biases. Away we go:

Apparently they just cast stop making these things.

5. Shrek Forever After: Shrek sucks. AHHHHHHH, it’s so freeing to say that.  So many people seem to like these shitty movies and I just don’t get it.  They’re not funny, the characters are stock, and Mike Myers does yet another stupid Scottish accent.  In fact, I decided to look up how much of his career has depended on that stupid Scottish crap.  Here we go:

A.He had a sketch on SNL called “If it ain’t Scottish, it’s crap.”

B.  So I married an Axe Murderer: He plays his own father and, of course, he’s Scottish.

C.  Shrek

D. Shrek 2

E. Shrek 3

F. Shrek 4

G.  Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me

H. Austin Powers in Goldmember

Do I really need to keep going?  I know Shawn has recommended this film and while I respect his opinion, I don’t agree with it.  AVOID!

4. The A-Team: Do we all remember how many bad movies there are based on TV shows?  The Beverly Hillbillies, The Avengers, Charlie’s Angels 1 and 2, Wild, Wild West and the Mod Squad — just to name a few.  Why in the hell do they keep making this shit?  It’s because morons keep going to see them.  The greedy suits don’t care what shit they shovel as long as they hear a cha-ching at the box office.  The only way to make these “films” go away is to stop going to them!!

Your typical Twilight fan.

3. The Twilight Saga: Ok, I know I’m not a 14-year-old girl and was told that they’re the target audience for this crap.  I watched the first Twilight film and consider it one of the worst pieces of dog shit I have ever had the displeasure of seeing in my life.  I’ve been told by others that the second one is even worse.  While I find that hard to believe, I have to say avoid even taking your daughter to this.  You’re saving precious brain cells she’ll need for college one day and precious brain cells you’d rather waste on drinking beer.

2. The Prince of Persia: Sands of Time: There’s only one thing worse than a movie based on a TV show and that’s a film based on a video game.  I mean, seriously, is Hollywood that devoid of ideas that they have to flip on an Xbox 360 for inspiration?  Not to mention, this film cost $200 million to produce and stars the catcher in Brokeback Mountain.  Yeah, that’s a recipe for success.  I can just see the meeting room at the movie studio going something like this:

Exec 1: “Ok, the 2010 summer season is creeping up and we need a new blockbuster.  What have you got for me?”

Exec 2:  “Well, I was playing my Xbox 360 and a light bulb went off.  How about we do Prince of Persia?”

Exec 1:  “Hmmm, that doesn’t sound bad.   Can we have a damsel in distress?”

Exec 2: “Of course and we’ll slut her up to get the teenage crowd.

Exec 1: “Perfect, perfect, we’ll keep them gazing at her and they’ll forget the script sucks.”

Exec 2:  “Oh, sir, we have no script, we’ll just take elements from the video game and wing it.”

Exec 1: “That sounds perfect.  But, when we green-light this turd and give you a huge budget, we need an enormous crowd so we can make as much money as possible.  I want a PG-13 rating to welcome all age groups, hot women for the teens and a hunky hero for the ladies and the gay crowd.  Then, it’ll be set in the Middle East so that it has an international flavor to pull in that overseas money.   Mmmmm, I can smell the greenbacks now.”

1. Killers: Ashton Kutcher is either the Antichrist or sold his soul to the devil and I’m determined to find out which.  Never has someone so untalented, so unfunny, so utterly impossible to watch ever been given this long a career.  And now, after shitting all over the film and television industry with his “acting”, we are given another brain-dead romantic comedy that should have never seen the light of day.  Who the hell watches his movies?  I have only ever caught them in pieces because seeing an Ashton Kutcher film is much like watching a guy bite the head of a chicken.  It’s no fun for you, it’s no fun for him, and it’s certainly no fun for the chicken.

Why film adaptations of video games don’t work

With the release of “Price of Persia: the Sands of Time,” we were left with the question: Why in God’s name would you make a movie about a Middle Eastern guy with an enchanted knife that can climb walls?

The games are cool, but this was not a game that left us yearning for anything more than a sequel to the game, which they did. And this was by far the biggest film production adapted from a video game with a $200 million budget, name recognition from Jake Gyllenhaal, and production by Jerry Bruckheimer. They’re either going to lose their shirt on this movie or a lot of respect, but they wouldn’t be the first.

Video games work in and of themselves because you can stretch the imagination and dumb down story lines a bit because it’s a game. It’s is not a transcendent medium that will work in books or film because we expect more from them — or at least some of us do. The dialogue in games is cornball at best, and the story lines are a means of getting us through a game, but don’t challenge us with a narrative the same way film and books do.

But for whatever reason, there is a host of directors and studio executives who want to cash in on the popularity of a video game without considering that audiences won’t pay to see a bad movie. Sure, there will be some die-hard fans of the game that will pay to see it, but the rest of us need a reason — like good plot, direction and acting.

We’ve been given a laundry list of video game movies that don’t work, and many have had big names but became even bigger flops, like “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider” ” Super Mario Bros.” “Resident Evil,” “House of the Dead,” and “Bloodrayne,” just to name a few. Please, please, please stop making these movies! Give the money to a charity, like scholarships for acting schools or the Please Assassinate Michael Bay Fund. Don’t give us any more movies like “Wing Commander” starring Freddie Prinze Jr. or “Street Fighter” starring Kylie Minogue and Jean-Claude Van Damme.

The following clips pay tribute to the fine filmmakers that brought us classics like “Mortal Kombat” and “Postal”:

Mortal Kombat: Epic fail. Here’s a tasty clip with awesome dialogue and a monster that grunts for several minutes at a time.

Super Mario Bros. Movie… sigh. Can’t believe they got Bob Hoskins, John Leguizamo and Dennis Hopper.

Postal…. ugh. I think of all the hungry people that could have been fed with the budget of this movie.

Here’s a nice Top 10 Worst list of video games from GameTrailers.com