Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time - Review

[The Simpleton 2]

Before I start writing anything, I'd like to quote a few words from wikipedia:

Top critics on Rotten Tomatoes have given 26% positive reviews with a "rotten" rating. Metacritic, who calculate an average rating based on reviews, gave a 49/100 . The film currently stands on both sites as the highest rated video game adaption ever

Movies based on video-games have always been taken lightly by critics and the audience alike. The reviews and box-office earnings testify for this. The makers always fail to get it right. Sometimes its bad acting, sometimes its a bad change of script, or some other element which made the original game a success. However, Prince of Persia has managed to top the list of good movies based on video games, so that must mean it's good, right? Yes, and no. It's all because of that element which made the game a huge success.

This movie tries to get it right from the beginning, but then loses it, picks up somewhere in the middle, and almost makes a huge mess of it in the end. Still, it will appeal to the fans and maybe end up as an average grosser. The first few minutes of the movie provide very good eye-candy, as we revel in ancient Persia, reconstructed carefully. We see as Dastan, an orphan is picked up from the streets by the King and is made a Prince. Then all of a sudden he grows up and we watch him getting ready for a war. Sounds similar to the game? Well it is indeed similar to the game's story for the first half-hour or so, and from then on there are heavy changes in the script. Actually the movie's script makes more sense than that of the game. But it isn't nearly as thrilling as the game was. The movie picks up a drag after the prince starts his travel with the princess to restore the dagger to safety.

The Dagger of Time promises great fun and the scenes with it are awesome to look at. Other than that, there's nothing new in here. All the chase/fight scenes seem too routine to enjoy. I watched the dubbed version so there was some comedy with accents; dunno if that comedy was meant to be there in the English version. The ending was a bit predictable and again resembled the game's story to some extent. All in all, it's just a popcorn movie meant to be enjoyed with friends on a day when you look to kill time - a whole 116 minutes of it!
Edited May 28, 2010 by The Simpleton (see edit history)