Well, I just came back from ancient Persia, and I’ve got sand in my trousers. It certainly is a very lavishly-produced film, with noble aspirations to be as epic as the Pirates trilogy (the subtitle should be clue enough that they’ve planned sequels on the way). Unfortunately, instead of being the grand adventure it promises to be in the trailers, it degenerated into an unintentional laughfest towards the end.
It starts out good, though. I loved the opening sequence of a young Dastan that brings to mind the ‘One Step Ahead’ scene from Aladdin. The time-reversal scenes were well-done and used only during emotionally-effective moments instead of all the time. There’s an intelligent allegory to the Iraq War, the hunt for non-existent WMDs, and the plot to overtake a country’s precious resources. And I did like Alfred Molina (who you may know as Doc Octopus from Spiderman 2) as a greedy, money-grubbing ostrich-racing entrepreneur.
Unfortunately, much of the story is bogged down by pretentious prophesying courtesy of Princess Tamina (the lovely Gemma Arteton, who played Strawberry Fields in QoS), poorly-shot action sequences (why is everyone going ‘Bourne’ nowadays? Can we just have a steady long-shot so we can see what’s going on?), and disturbing amounts of violence for a family film. Much like last year’s stinker 2012, lots of people die (but this time in slow motion), the final showdown goes on too long (ex. Dastan does a spectacular leap avoiding a long fall, but moments after surviving, falls anyway- I laughed my butt off at that one), and there is too much unnecessary exposition (we get what the dagger does, Jake, no need to explain it to us). I was in tears by the end, but not the ‘OMG This is so beautiful’-kinda tears, but the ‘I really can’t believe they got away with this nonsense’-kinda tears.
And Tamina… god, she is annoying. Does she have to really taunt the Prince and go on about ‘Divine Destiny’ every step of the way? Though, she does look very pretty. And speaking of loudmouths, Persia made the same linguistic error as ‘How to Train Your Dragon’ in getting their accents wrong. Practically every character speaks like they’re from England instead of the Middle East!
The one unforgivable scene for me was when the Hassassin leader [spoil]slits a snake’s belly open and pulls the dagger out from its guts. As much I’m a fan of snakes, I can understand killing one in self-defence, but this poor guy was basically used as an ancient method of smuggling illicit substances, and I was cringing in pity the whole way through.[/spoil]
I did enjoy most of it, though. If by most, we mean lots of falling from great heights, slashing people with no blood, throwing things at the camera in slow-motion (why didn’t they release it in 3D like 99% of movies nowadays?), and running away from inept guards. It really felt like a mash-up of The Fugitive, Deja Vu, and Gladiator. In slow-moootion.
Sorry, I can’t help it. Prince of Persia really is quite fun for a summer movie, but it’s not really ‘Pirates’ level, not even AWE-close. A real time-killer in every sense of the word. 
They liven my imagination and let my heart soar
