THE PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE SANDS OF TIME (2010)

Only twelve years old, this ‘Persian’ fantasy adventure (think 21st Century Arabian Knights/Douglas Fairbanks) would now be completely recast.  Here Persia (or Iran, if you must) shows up with an all-Brit cast you’d readily accept in a similarly up-dated Jane Austen adaptation.  All sporting peaches & cream complexions.  Our orphan hero, raised to princely level for youthful bravery, is played by Jake Gyllenhaal (in crazy good shape) with a slight Cockney accent.  (Dropped for posh BBC tones when his romance turns serious.)  And you’d need to go back more than half a century to match this film’s token Black sidekick; strong, laconic, expendable, dying for his White brothers-in-arms as if he were Woody Strode in SPARTACUS.  (Really!  He’s the only Black guy in the cast, including the thousands of CGI warriors.)  Based on a series of computer games, which does somewhat excuse CGI overuse, the presumed idea was to jumpstart a replacement series for the fading PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN franchise.  Note the subtitle, as if we were beginning with Part Two.  Alas for producer Jerry Bruckheimer, middling grosses didn’t warrant another dip.  And the film?  It’s okay; a princely power struggle between three royal siblings and their Uncle, the King’s brother.  Poor Gemma Arterton, a neighboring Princess, holds her own thru wile and guile, but has the face of a British nanny.  While the usually original Alfred Molina makes like Hugh Griffith in the 1959 BEN-HUR, but with ostriches instead of race horses.  Even so, director Mike Newell, when not under the thumb of his CGI action masters (nothing ever seems at stake when they animate these slice-and-dice action sequences), shows his strong suit by getting something like real acting in the midst of noisy extravaganza.*  Though even he can’t explain why the big time-reversal gimmick everyone is fighting over doesn’t go all the way back to the beginning of the movie.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Mike Newell is the guy who taught all the HARRY POTTER kids how to act (and just in time) when he directed the third in the franchise.