PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE SANDS OF TIME - REVIEW

There is nothing wrong with Jake Gyllenhaal: Donnie Darko, The Good Girl, Moonlight Mile, even Bubble Boy, it's all good. But give him long hair, pump up his muscles and give him a GODAWFUL english/cockney/irish/other accent and what you're left with isn't so much Jake but Jak Gyllenhaal, Jake's idiotic older brother. And unfortunately that's who they got to play Prince of Persia.

Video game to film adaptations aren't exactly famous for their success and this probably won't change much although it is arguably one of the best in that sub genre. Infinitely more watchable than the Resident Evil films or whatever crap oozed out of Uwe Boll over the past 5 years or so.

Prince of Persia is a great game, the later ones especially not the NES or Master System ones which had controls about as fluent as that giant wheel Conan pushes in the 80s Arnie film. The film tries to make the most of its swashbuckling action, silly but fun story and exotic setting and succeeds in some respect. The action is entertaining, Jake tries his best and the whole thing looks decent enough. Unfortunately it is let down by dodgy accents, a whiny and annoying Arterton, terrible editing, clunky direction, a poor script and a confusiing and messy third act packed full of rubbish CGI which obstructs everything but the colour yellow.

It's a shame the film couldn't have kept its modern touches and CGI to a dull roar and taken a page from the old Sinbad movies which, with their primitive stop-motion monsters and stereotypes, were infinitely more entertaining and fun than this here mess. Overall, it's not too bad and for a friday night of silly 2D entertainment it's fine but don't expect anything actually decent.