Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas - 8.3/10
So this is a story about Sinbad the Sailor, based on
everything except Sinbad the Sailor. No, really. Despite the original tales
taking place in the middle east with mostly Arabian and Chinese
characters/cultural influence, this movie moves the story to the Greek
Mediterranean. Greek myths are also used, although not really, since the only
goddess seen or mentioned is Eris, who is nothing like her mythological
counterpart, and none of the other stuff – like Tartarus – really is either.
And then there’s the story itself: one friend offers himself as a substitute
for execution for the other, who heroically returns at the last minute to save
him. I can’t remember what this story is from – or even if it is fictional or
actually happened – and it’s bugging the crap out of me, but I know it exists
somewhere. And of course there’s the obligatory random made-up McGuffin.
But you know what? I’m going to assume that at least 90% of
this movie’s target audience doesn’t know any of the stuff I just said. And
that’s fine. To be honest, it didn’t really affect my enjoyment of the film at
all anyway. And I did enjoy it. It was an epic adventure flick along the lines
of The
Odyssey and Jason and the Argonauts. The characters were fun and the action
scenes were really exciting. I need to expand on that: just about every
character was totally badass and could pull off stunts than would make the
Wachowski brothers pee their pants, and the action scenes were a shit-ton of
fun to watch because of it, and also because they were really well animated.
Like Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron,
there is some CGI mixed in with the traditional animation. It’s used primarily
for the various monsters and for the realm of chaos. Sometimes it works and
looks really impressive, and sometimes it…doesn’t. The first sea monster in
particular looks horridly out of place and awkward. The giant ice bird though,
they nailed that one.
As long as I’m talking about animation, I need to mention
Eris, the goddess of discord. The animation for the character was so creative
and awesome that I can’t possibly describe it with mere words. It was so fluid;
she was constantly moving, shifting form and size, wafting about like smoke.
She looked, fittingly enough, like chaos personified. Her domain was done in
much the same way, though because they relied on CGI for that it wasn’t quite
as impressive, though still cool.
The voice work was also exceptionally well done. I knew from
the credits that Brad Pitt and Catherine Zeta-Jones were playing the leads, and
Michelle Pfeiffer was Eris. Thing is though, their performances were so genuine
that I forgot all about that after five minutes or so. A lot of times when
movies cast really recognizable celebrity voices, I keep hearing the actor
instead of the character. Not so here. Mad props.
Really there isn’t much else to say about this one. A really
fun epic adventure with some great action, an awesome villain, superb voice
acting, and a few bits of clunky CGI integration that are forgotten quickly
enough. If you haven’t seen it I can’t blame you since this one’s a little more
obscure, but you no longer have an excuse. Get on it.
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