Brought to you by the director of Pirates of the Carribbean 1~4

Or not. Did anybody else hear that in the trailer for Prince of Persia? Up till the end credits, I was certain this was a Gore Verbinski film. Nope, it's Mike Newell. I'd say they had similar styles, though. And the music was eerily similar... just that the Prince of Persia version had less intensity and more mellow. I just looked this up, but it wasn't Hans Zimmer either... Well, whatever.

I understand I'm a bit late for this, considering it came out, like, 1.5 years ago. I really wanted to see it but all of my normal movie buddies (I am so very picky with movie buddies. You won't believe how disruptive people can be these days. Texting during movie with phone placed in cupholder until it vibrates obnoxiously every five minutes? Laughing maniacally at a very good part and then constantly asking me what the actor intends to do and/or what just happened? True stories. No exaggeration whatsoever.) thought it was nerdy and weird. I mean, what else could you say about a movie involving the mystical "Sands of Time," hot main characters, one of which most definitely fakes a British accent (the other I don't know), and the Persian Empire? Exactly.
So I just saw it on Netflix (my best friend) and you know, it wasn't half so bad. I did see Aladdin in there, especially in the market scene at the beginning, and then the end with Jake Gyllenhaal's uncle (Jafar), Jake Gyllenhaal (Aladdin), his princess (Jasmine), and the sand-vortex (the gigantic hour-glass in which Jafar imprisons Jasmine for a minute or so). And I guess also the part when Jake bursts into the room full of girls who giggle at him even though there doesn't seem to be much reason for such behavior. That part's like when Aladdin jumps into the room of three girls and their fat mistress during his opening number. But, you know, at least it wasn't as bad as Avatar with James Cameron. I don't know about you, but I think that film is considered the epitome of plagiarism and predictability. Obviously, I didn't like it very much.
Oh, and by the way, if you were bothered during the movie like I was, the guy playing Jake/Dastan's uncle, yeah, that's the evil guy from Shutter Island. Part of the reason why I didn't trust him from the minute his face came on screen. Anyway, that bothered me for all of the 2 hour duration of this movie. He also reminded me a lot of Scar from Lion King, who isn't even a human being.

But alas! I digress. Other than Jake's accent which sounds ridiculous after having seen Love & Other Drugs and Sourcecode, and excluding occasional awkwardly-placed scenes,  this was a pretty good movie. For example, Jake tore through an avalanche of sand, bumped into a scary emo guy-liner evil priest, and watched his girlfriend gut him... what would be a better time to make out? But otherwise, there was nothing really out of the ordinary—great costumes, though, I noticed. It's almost like if Gladiator was sent back through Hollywood and processed to death in order to meet the demands of the shallow populace. It's still a good movie with a pretty good plot, but it's nothing I haven't seen before, and it has a good amount of gore, platonic romance, Hollywood gloss, archaic mystique, special effects, and exotic scenery to keep me mildly interested.