'Persia' just a waste of 'Time'

Can video games be made into successful movies? Despite high hopes for “Prince of Persia: Sands of Time,” the answer remains: no.

Based on a classic game franchise, the story has been heavily adapted to give it a workable plot, revolving around Prince Dastan (Jake Gyllenhaal), who is adopted into the Persian royal family, finding a magical dagger that lets him travel through time. He must stop his evil uncle Nizam (Ben Kingsley) from destroying the world with that power. Along the way, he meets a sassy princess (Gemma Arterton), a sleazy businessman (Alfred Molina) and several deadly assassins.

If any of this sounds familiar, you’re on the right track: “Prince of Persia” is a mash-up of every action movie you’ve ever seen. There’s the combative love interest that learns to love the hero despite her initial disgust, the greedy thief providing lazy comic relief and the menacing black man with a heart of gold who dies to save the team. Our hero’s trust is betrayed by his creepy uncle with the goatee.

Not to mention the fact that this movie about Persia seems populated entirely by white-skinned, blue-eyed actors with British accents.

I’m fairly certain I’ve heard every line of dialogue in this movie in other films before. The sets seem like a bad stunt show from Disney World. The action sequences are good, but the effects aren’t real enough to convey any sense of danger.

The many good parts of this movie are frequently sabotaged minutes later by characters doing inexplicable things that must have seemed like a “cool idea” to the writers, but leave the audiences shouting “What?!”

No matter how hard you try, Hollywood, you can’t convince me that Gyllenhaal is a cool action hero. Arterton is playing the same character she did in “Clash of the Titans.” Molina gives a glimmer of hope, but by the end, it’s just embarrassing he’s in the movie at all.

Wrap that all together with an oddly placed and impeccably detailed metaphor for the war in Iraq, and you’ve got an entertaining stinker. The good parts are fun, and the bad parts are laughably bad.

Remember “The Scorpion King”? Yeah, it’s kinda like that.