I haven't really played any of the video games this is based upon. I played the Sands of Time game once for about 5 minutes and that was it. I remember being able to breifly go back in time and this movie portrays that several times.
So, best video game adaption ever?
I don't know, the film itself doesn't ever give you the impression the source material was a video game really. Jake Gyllenhall's Prince Dastan isn't one for a personality either. He goes through the motions of being an Aladdin-esque street rat unwittingly brought into a royal Persian family on an act of goodwill. He has two brothers, one uncle (Sir Ben Kingsley) and his father the Persian King.
The political metaphors of this movie are completely "I see what you did thar." An invasion of a holy land under the guise of "they have weapons, we need to stop them but we can't prove it just yet" was pretty obvious. Through this escapade involving Dastan doing lots of fun parkour moves, he crosses paths with Princess Tamina (the hot red headed ***** from QoS and was also in Clash of the Titans). Together she and Dastan have one wacky adventure in Persia where they need to protect the special dagger that turns back time from Ben Kingsley.
Jake Gyllenhall's stuntman is more or less the star of the show as he does crazy stunt after crazy stunt. Princess ***** Galore is hot but she isn't given a lot of meaningful dialogue other than "we must protect the
sacred dagger and deliver it to the
sacred temple where it will be safe in a
sacred place." Needless to say she likes to talk about sacred this, sacred that a lot.
Their love connection meanders along predictably knowing how it's going to end.
Alfred Molina you can tell is having the most fun playing a guy who runs Ostrich races in the middle of the desert. He has the most personality out of anyone and is reduced to a side character. For shame.
The effects with the sand dagger are pretty good, but you never get a sense of peril with any of our heroes in danger so it can be a bit of a bore. Overall it's decent enough if you're looking to kill 2 hours but it's by no means spectacular, seemingly another run of the mill Jerry Bruckheimer produced adventure.
7/10
At one point the goons hunt down Dastan the only way they can. Comb the desert!