Movie Review: 'Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time'

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Gemma Arterton, and Ben Kingsley Directed by Mike Newell Rated PG-13

It's the perfect time of year for a movie like Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. Memorial Day weekend is filled with road trips that feature roadside attractions that are really more like roadside distractions. And that's essentially what this movie is. Prince of Persia is a mostly disposable, mostly pleasant distraction. You won't learn much, won't be kept in much suspense, won't love it, but won't mind it. You'll sit down, have a decent time - or at least won't be bored - and then you'll get up and go about the rest of your weekend. If there's a big failure here it's that Prince of Persia probably aspired to be a little more impressive, a little more memorable. It's not a completely empty experience, and it's definitely polished, but you might wonder how much better it could have been if more attention had been paid to building it from beginning to end instead of action scene by action scene. The video game on which this is based, first released in 1989, was more addictive than the movie is, but to the credit of Jerry Bruckheimer's lasest mountain of popcorn, it compares favorably in terms of scope. It feels like a game come to life, and most similar adaptations miss that. Of course, this is also the biggest video game movie so far, with an estimated budget around a no-longer-shocking $200 million. But in the immortal words of Admiral Ackbar, $200 million is a trap. How can you spend that much money, it will be asked, when you can't even make it compelling on the page? Shouldn't that be priority one? Isn't that what should tell you how much the movie needs to cost, anyway? As it is, the story is very simple - good vs. evil - and the writing is pockmarked with anachronistic dialogue that would bother you if there was ever a pretense that anything here should be taken seriously. Let's set the stage, though: The Prince of Persia is Dastan (Jake Gyllenhaal), who rose from humble beginnings to be a prince, but since it doesn't really work that way, he's "destined" for greatness. Perhaps the name "Dastan" is kind of a subliminal message for that. When his adoptive father - the king, in case you don't know how all that works - Dastan's brothers turn against him. In his flight from danger, he bands with Princess Tamina (Gemma Arterton), in whose possession is a sacred dagger she is sworn to protect. The dagger can launch its wielder through time, forward or back, and that comes in very handy in the troublesome present. Speaking of the present, one disturbing trend in Persia is the editing, which slices up the stuntwork rather brazenly. The reason for that, of course, is the fistful of digital effects thrown in at every possible turn. This is what is meant by "If there's a big failure here it's that Prince of Persia probably aspired to be a little more impressive, a little more memorable." Not so long ago, stunts really saved the day for an action movie caught in the middle. The Burt Reynolds flick Sharkey's Machine is known for one thing: A freefall drop by Dar Robinson, a stuntman who had a bit role in the film precisely because he would fire a gun back up at Burt while descending about 200 feet. Today, there's a lot less breathtaking stuntwork, and everybody knows where you can find it, like The Bourne Ultimatum and Casino Royale. This would have been an excellent candidate, because by almost any measurable standard, a great stunt thrills an audience more than a great sequence of computer animation meant to replicate the same movement. It's like you're watching the show that's taking place around the actors in this case. When there's not much happening in terms of story development - as the Dar Robinson example above proves - legitimate action can sure spike the punch. The performances are slightly better than the script would indicate, although the attempt to create sexual tension between Arterton and Gyllenhaal isn't nearly as interesting as it should be. But they're both good enough, Gyllenhaal finally getting a to lighten up and take a summer movie role and Arterton showing more life than she has in previous US films like Clash of the Titans. Of Ben Kingsley, the same rule applies: He's either better than a great script or worse than a bad one. It always seems to work that way. He's Dastan's uncle in the film, and he has a goatee, which should tell you which side of the ledger he's on. Prince of Persia is just a mild diversion, though. If you're just tooling around with no particular destination, it might be worth getting off the freeway this holiday weekend, but it's really not worth going out of your way to see it; it's just another big ball of yarn in between rest stops.

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