- Studio: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
- Release Date: May 28, 2010
- Critic Score
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80It deserves to be seen on a hot Saturday afternoon in a theater (preferably an air-conditioned one) peopled with other people, the way many of us used to see movies as kids.
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75On the scale of summer action films, this is to the “Transformers” sequel what an Andy Warhol print is to a first-grader’s refrigerator painting.
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75This is what a videogame movie looks like now.
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70A handsome, fast-paced and innocuous adventure that's easy to take but lacks epic scale.
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70Mixing old-fashioned content and state of the art effects, this Jerry Bruckheimer production trades ‘pirates' for ‘princes' to revive the swashbuckling, sword fighting spirit of the sort Douglas Fairbanks or Errol Flynn specialized.
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70No masterpiece, Persia is fun for exactly as long as it takes to sit through it.
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67Something is going on all the time, even if that something is oftentimes clumsy, nonsensical, or flat. But the sheer whoosh of the story line keeps you watching anyway.
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63What's missing in Prince of Persia is a sense that all the running, jumping, climbing and fighting is leading to something. The best video games challenge you to reach the next level. Prince of Persia is content to skim the surface.
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63It's sort of fun, certainly more so than the "National Treasure" pictures, as well as less manic (a little less) than the recent "Mummy" films.
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63The real standout is Alfred Molina, hamming it up as a desert entrepreneur who races ostriches and avoids paying taxes.
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63A ditzy film that offers more evidence that good actors, good action and one-liners don’t solve the one thing missing in every movie video game adaptation – a story that makes sense.
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63A surprisingly entertaining movie on its own, a strap-yourself-in, suspend-your-disbelief summer popcorn adventure.
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63Prince of Persia is woven of recycled fibers, but by the slipping standards of summertime entertainment, it's a magic carpet ride.
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60Its restraint might put off thrill-seekers, but if you can endure the wooden dialogue and sloppy exposition, it musters the entertainment quotient of a middle-order Harry Potter.
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60Bruckheimer's passably enjoyable, antiquity-themed epic should satisfy its young male core demographic well enough, but won't connect with other auds on the level of Bruckheimer's "Pirates of the Caribbean" franchise.
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58None of it is thrilling, but Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time has a Saturday matinee goofiness that'll go well enough with air conditioning.
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50The two leads are not inspired. Jake Gyllenhaal could make the cover of a muscle mag, but he plays Dastan as if harboring Spider-Man's doubts and insecurities. I recall Gemma Arterton as resembling a gorgeous still photo in a cosmetics ad.
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50May be the first movie that effectively erases virtually its entire story line by the very last scene.
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50How bad is Prince of Persia? Whether or not director Mike Newell is to blame, the action sequences lack verve and scope.
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50It's not the grand scale action-adventure it aspires to be, but this faux epic does offer family-friendly entertainment.
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50An energetic if empty-headed adventure based on the popular video game.
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50Stitched together from so many other movies that it plays like an attack of multiple déjà vu. Stray bits of “Star Wars,’’ “Pirates of the Caribbean,’’ “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,’’ and “Robin Hood’’ pass by like flotsam, and the overwhelming tone is good-natured but alarmingly generic.
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50Destined to disappear into the quicksand of time, too innocuous to be hated, too bland to be remembered, just awaiting some bright optimist in a distant future to press the do-over button.
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50The audience should be given game controllers upon entering the theater. It wouldn't mean the film would make any more sense, but at least you'd feel like you had some say in the matter.
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50By no means a great film, but it is an entertaining one, a nearly bloodless, family-friendly throwback of sorts to a cinematic age when Persian palace intrigue, winsome princesses, and ambitious princes ruled the back lots and Errol Flynn was in like, well, Errol Flynn.
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50Yet Newell, he of "Four Weddings and a Funeral," is ill-suited to steward such sword-and-sandals adventure, his direction--while slightly eschewing modern genre practitioners’ penchant for slicing-and-dicing skirmishes into visual incoherence--is too pedestrian and partial to clumsy slow-mo effects to truly energize the story.
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50In Prince Dastan, he (Gyllenhaal) is supposed to be that heady mix of street smarts, roguish charm and barroom moxie with the noble heart of a lion underneath. It's a lot to ask and turns out to be something more than he can deliver.
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50For the most part this is perfectly painless mush. The movie is irrepressibly silly -- what were you expecting? -- but a few hours of Mr. Gyllenhaal jumping around in leather and fluttering his long lashes has its dumb-fun appeal.
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50Like most movies in which a central story element doubles as a toy tie-in, Prince of Persia isn't overly burdened by ambition.
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50Another disposable family entertainment.
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50Spinning a handsome Disney adventure out of a videogame is a testament to Bruckheimer’s commercial savvy. The fact that it still isn’t particularly good seems beside the point.
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40What Newell can't seem to do is give Prince of Persia a unifying style, tone or purpose. The film moves well, but doesn't show any motivation other than getting to the next game level.
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40A Jerry Bruckheimer–produced video-game adaptation--it has to be good, doesn’t it? (Ya, sarcasm.)
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40Prince of Persia is meant purely as light entertainment, but the way it draws on layers of junk is depressing.
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38There's plenty of action, but it's all the same.
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30The lesson here is simple: In the digital realm, the bigger the worse. What looks distinctive and believable in short takes and small doses can turn blatantly phony and deadly familiar when the scale is pumped up. Prince of Persia pumps itself up to the bursting point, and bursts.
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As a Jerry Bruckheimer production and a game adaptation, Prince of Persia has every business being jumpy and sequential, and as a frivolous summer popcorn flick it has every business being inane.
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20An epic example of muddled storytelling, chintzy excitement and scatter-brained execution.