Summer is the perfect time for ridiculous movies. There is something about the summer movie season that makes it okay for these cheesy, big broad action movies to exist. I wish I could better explain why it is that way, but I cannot. It is just a fact of my life. In fact, I kind of get excited for Jerry Bruckheimer produced movies in the summer. Even though he made a mockery out of them with those god awful Pirates sequels, I still want his summer movies to be big and fun. This year he was returning with a Pirates style action movie. It is a "Sword and Sandal" style action movie big splashy effects and the Memorial Day release date. It seemed like a cannot lose situation, but the movie was not without controversy due to Jake Gyllenhaal not being remotely Persian. More importantly though, was the question "Can this break the bad movies based on video game?" curse.
The king of Persia has two sons from birthright, but one day he sees an orphan boy go out of his to help someone else and the king adopts him. The 3 boys grow up to be The Princes of Persia. The orphan, Dastan(Jake) grows into your typical movie black sheep. He does not follow orders, takes too many risks, but somehow manages to always succeed. His brothers decide to attack a sacred city because they received information that this city was making and selling weapons to Persia's enemies. They take the city and capture the sexy princess, Tamina(Gemma Arterton). The big prince claims her for wife, and he leaves Dastan to present her to the king, along with a gift that Dastan is supposed to claim as his own. The gift, a prayer robe, kills the king (Like the husband in Medea) and Dastan is the main suspect, so he bails with the princess. The princess goes with him because during the raid Dastan got his hands on a magic dagger and she is the protector. This dagger has a button on it that if you push turns back time 1 minute and only the holder of it knows time got turned back. The dagger is triggered by the sands of time that were put in a giant hour glass by the gods after saving the life of a young girl or something. Dastan and the the princess must keep the dagger out of the hands on whoever is the bad guy because if you push the button when the dagger is stuck in the hourglass, time forever can be changed, except not really because doing that will just wipe the Earth clean of people.
If you could not follow all of that have no worries because 90% of the dialogue in this movie is exposition. There is almost dialogue that does not explain something to us. It is as if the characters should just turn to us and lecture us on what is happening. Apparently we are incapable of figuring anything out. Also, if you ever forget what movie you are watching, they remind you often by saying "The Prince of Persia" about 7 times in the first 15 minutes, including the ridiculous pre-credits opening voice over work. No one in the movie can really make the dialogue work, but Alfred Molina as a anti-government crook who organizes ostrich races manages some laughs with all of the stupid stuff he has to do and say. His presence gives the movie a bit of a jolt, but I was hoping he would only be a cameo so when he kept popping up, I kind of got annoyed.
That being said, the movie was actually pretty damn entertaining. While I am certainly not a fan of the video game, on which this is based, the movie does a great job of making it feel like a game with all of ledge jumping. The director, set designers and stunt team do a great job of coming up with realistic reasons for all of the jumping and while the editing is a bit to swift for my taste, the action sequences actually look and feel pretty good. The action moves quickly and has a enough big stunts to make me sit up a little bit. The initial castle siege, led by Jake is particularly cool, especially when a giant vat of fire is introduced to the action. Sword fights are always a welcome sight in a movie and because I am a sucker for them, I am fairly easy on sword fighting movies, generally. Every time the movie starts to get waterlogged from exposition, we get an action scene that gets us going again. I only wish I had less talking and more jumping.
When it comes to these types of movies, they can be made or broken by the effects. There are some cool effects in this movie, especially as the building crumbles in the climax, but the snakes looked a bit too fake for me, which is always annoying. I am not saying they looked as bad as the Alligators at the end of Erasure, but they did not look that good. However, watching the king burn was a nice effect and a lot of the jumping stuff was probably done in front of a blank screen and it looks pretty solid. I do know a lot of money went into building the sets and it shows. A lot of the castles and cities are impressive looking. I really liked the ostrich track and that whole scene which takes place in this city full of criminals. It was a nice touch. Also, the effect of watching people go a minute back in time looks kind of cool, but also kind of goofy because we see people walking backwards and it looks like someone just hit the rewind button. That always makes me giggle.
Jake Gyllenhaal is typically an actor playing characters facing major tragedies and he is a quiet, solemn kind of actor and it was really nice to see him lighten up and go kind of crazy. He plays Dastan with a half smile and a light in his eyes. He uses his whole body to exude this kind of kinetic energy that distracts you from his ridiculous looking hair. Ben Kingsley is kind of locking down this awful kind of over acting and looks to be trying to outdo Liam Neeson for appearing in the most movies in the last two years. Gemma Alterton is not an actress so much as a young lady with a slamming body who can read lines well enough to not feel like a robot. She is perfect for this kind of movie and she and Jake have a nice sexual chemistry, but the dialogue they are given as flirting is pretty bad.
The Prince of Persia is a mostly fun, harmless action movie that fills the quota of big bad summer action movie. the action kept me interested, but the dialogue tried its best to put me to sleep. I am not sure Jake really has a career in top-lining summer movie franchises, but it was nice to watch him cut loose and have some fun with a role that required him to be more physically present than mentally present. It is not going to convert anyone to video game adaptations, but there are worse ones out there and this one mostly satisfies.
Final Grade: C
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