I have rarely, if ever, walked into a screening of a film more ready to openly hate a film than I did tonight.
I went to see SINBAD: LEGEND OF THE SEVEN SEAS fully ready to dice and fillet the processed soy product that would undoubtedly be palatable to all tastes, without so much as a single spice that made the stories of Sinbad so open to being cherished by me.
I grew up with Sinbad. From the Silver Screen, where I first caught sight of Harryhausen’s tellings… to that smiling scoundrel of a mug worn by Douglas Fairbanks Jr… to the chapters dedicated to “Sindbad the Sailor” found in the verses of THE ARABIAN NIGHTS.
I Love Sinbad.
I’ve never seen a faithful telling of the character, and still long to see a version that begins with a man named Hindbad with a burden and life so hard, that he doubts the very right of Sindbad to have the wealth he has while others suffer so. Then for Sindbad to invite this impoverished man into his banquet halls and to tell of his Seven Voyages, so this man could see that his life was not always that of silks and spices, but of hardships inhuman and unbelievable… to light the hope of adventure in the souls of cultures from the streets of Baghdad centuries ago to our ears and eyes today.
SINBAD: LEGEND OF THE SEVEN SEAS is not that tale, not by a long shot. With its grossly modern language and sensibilities to the cultural cleansing that the film represents… One can watch this film and have not a single iota of a clue that they are watching the tale of the greatest hero of Baghdad and Muslim legend.
To have done that, would have meant financial suicide, because I know only too well that too few would take their children to a hero saving Baghdad from ruin, but call it Syracuse… make everyone look quasi-European tan, and you’ll be nice and safe. Imagine had they done the same to the story of Moses in THE PRINCE OF EGYPT, but… hey… I understand, we live in the melting pot and this Velveeta telling of Sinbad, well it is the telling of Sinbad for the times we live in. I only hope there will be a day that the true telling and adaptation will be done and accepted here. When a Muslim hero can exist for all, with the same eagerness and joy with which we except a Greek HERCULES.
Ok, enough of the Soap Box…
I went to this film, fully expecting to hate it. I hated the trailers. I really hated the trailers. I hated the trailers so much that Jeffrey Katzenberg called to tell me to not judge the film by the trailer… to have faith. That he would ship me the film on the 23rd of May, the day after it was done, so that I could judge the final film and love or hate it… I would be judging the final film.
Well, I have to say, this did make me think that perhaps I was a bit tough on the film. Then the 23rd came and went without so much as a peep. The 23rd of June came and went without a peep. Well, so much for that confidence.
Today, I heard from a friend that they were screening SINBAD: LEGEND OF THE SEVEN SEAS tonight, and it was at a theater that I am always welcomed at, so with no pass, Father Geek and I went uninvited.
Theater managers waved me right on in, and as I sat there in the theater, I told Dad that I had been talking with a friend online, and how I told them I was seeing “Sinbad” tonight. They responded with, “Sin-baaaaaaaaaaad?” To which I responded, “Sin-BRAD” and then they came back with “SPIN-BRAD” I then told Dad that I was probably going to call this review, “Spin-Brad: Thief of Shahrazâd.”
The theater filled up with around 500 folks – mostly families with children and it was time for the film.
I was kind of half expecting a SHARKSLAYER teaser, but apparently they didn’t have one ready… a shame for sure.
The film begins and with the exception of a few problems, I found the film to be absolutely wonderful. I’m still rather shocked by how involving the film was and well executed given the shoddy trailers.
Ok, admittedly Brad Pitt’s Sinbad takes around 30 minutes to get used to. He’s so… Brad that there were times where I just saw Pitt up there doing his thing. It isn’t just the voice, they took several of his mannerisms that he’s done in his modern day film work. At one point, he does the talking muppet hand thing as if to say, “Yabba yabba yabba”, then waves the person off as he turns. It was a total Pitt moment, which did bug me, because I didn’t want to SEE or even HEAR Brad Pitt here, I wanted him to just disappear into the voice work, and eventually he does… At one moment of character confession for him, he’d completely just become the character and it was the best moment of the entire film. I believe you’ll know it when you see it.
Joseph Fiennes’ PROTEUS is just a complete non-character. Just nothing particularly groovy about the character. He’s just a plot device. Same with every character in Syracuse. They’re all designed bland. No real ethnicity or cultural heritage. They remind me of those people on those planets on bad utopian Star Trek episodes where they’re essentially just bored sheep longing for their never-ending field of grass to just chew on till they die.
However, they are not all that important. Instead, the important characters are all either ethereal or on Sinbad’s boat.
First… There’s Michelle Pfeiffer’s ERIS, the goddess of chaos. As you can probably guess, she’s like Loki, sexy and a wench. She loves just putting a monkey wrench in everything. As a voice, Michelle Pfeiffer oozes sensuality as Eris. As a work of animation, Eris is a marvel… a trickster, here, there… everywhere. Within a single line of dialogue she could be 50 ft away, blink, stroking your cheek, blink, in front of you, blink, 10 ft behind you. The result is beautiful work. So – a big pat on the back goes out to Dan Wagner as the supervising animator, along with the team of Robert Espanto Domingo, John Hill, Yoshimichi Tamura and finally – Scott Bern. My personal favorite moment for her is the trailer shot where she’s over-sized clacking her nails in front of Sinbad on the rock. Delicious moment, and it works far better in the context of the film.
Catherine Zeta-Jones’ Marina didn’t work for me at the beginning, but as the film continued, I warmed to Marina. At the beginning they play her character and her relationship with Sinbad in a similar fashion to say…. Olivia De Havilland’s to Errol Flynn in CAPTAIN BLOOD – that barely tolerable antagonistic hate/attraction for each other -- only Flynn and Olivia had it down to an art form, and here it didn’t feel right till later… Of course early on, I think I was having trouble adjusting to the overt modern feeling to all the dialogue which was so out of place for these characters, and later I had accepted it.
My favorite character in the film is this sailor on Sinbad’s ship called RAT. Rat is a genius of a character. Absolutely classic! He’s a man of the ropes, always with his feet off the deck, hanging, entering frame from odd angles, nearly always coming in from the top half of the frame… which is always jarring, but pleasantly so. The way he moves, the concept of him and just everything about him is a triumph. The team that created his character should be watched for future animation work. EXCEPTIONAL! The Supervising Animator was Steve Horrocks, but with Helen Michael and Raymond Flores Fabular lending their talents as well. These 3 really did a bang up job on the character. The character stole the film for me. He’s a minor character yes, but the same way that John Turturro can steal a Coen film with a few minutes here and there licking a bowling ball, RAT steals scenes with a ukulele and a sheepish look and a few words from Adriano Giannini as his voice.
I enjoyed the film immensely despite the baggage I brought against the film. It is the best action adventure animated film since ALADDIN and the third best action adventure American animated film after BATMAN: MASK OF THE PHANTASM and ALADDIN. There are no characters in this film that I out and out hate, I could do without the dog, but I get why he’s there… I just wish when he attacked, he was vicious instead of lovable. This is the most successfully entertaining 2D animated film from Dreamworks to date. Very good work, and not at all the disaster that the trailer made it out to be.
It is still miles behind Harryhausen’s films, but hell… what’d ya expect?
