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Monday, August 31, 2015

Movie Review - Sinbad and the Minotaur

Netflix is a wonderful thing. So many bad movies...

Sinbad and the Minotaur (2011) was an abomination. My son summed it up well. "This is a bad D&D campaign. On film." Nothing could save it from the MST treatment after that. We also decided it would make a fun D&D campaign with a few tweaks.

Cast of good guys:
Sinbad - looks good with his shirt off, supposed to be a thief but we never saw any evidence of that skill. He beat up a few people.
Big fighter dude - never caught his name but he has a very high constitution and lots of hit points and carries around large random objects as weapons. In the movie he carried around this big wooden thing that looked like a cross between a water skin, a giant wooden cornucopia, and a scimitar. He whacked someone once, so I think it was a weapon. Looked dorky, though.
Token minority - a black guy whose job was to ask stupid questions so Sinbad could look smart answering them.
The scholar - Nestor the scholar. Looked a lot like what's-his-name from the Star Wars prequel 1, Quai-Gon-Jin I think. Wasn't nearly as much fun since he didn't have the cool accent. His job was to spout information.
The princess - she spent the whole movie running around in a belly-dance outfit and being spunky.
Assorted sailors, sort of - mostly just cannon fodder.

Cast of bad guys:
Algebra the sorcerer - not really the name but way more fun to make fun of. He had the classic moments of megalomania which derailed his evil plans. He didn't kick a puppy to prove how evil he was, but he did kill his pet hawk. And he was bald and had a gravelly voice, so you knew he was evil. Plus he smacked his belly dancing slaves around.
Roger the Undying - not really his name either, but Roger the Undying makes me giggle so I'll keep that. He was some weird vampire knockoff. He sparkled in the sunlight, too, but only because he was wearing something sparkly half the time. We decided he'd look better in a cardigan sweater and singing, "It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood, a beautiful day for a neighbor—ly snack." He whined a lot and ate dead things.
Crazy insane priestess - she was sweet and innocent looking, at first, then she went batcrap crazy. You could tell because her hair got progressively more ratted. And she sprouted horns from her forehead. And her voice got deep and echoed. And she started ranting. But she was still sweet and adorable so she lived.
Random assorted crazy villagers - mostly cannon fodder for the fight scenes. Sort of like zombies, with horns.

Plot:
Cue text scrolling to explain the movie. Followed by a prologue explaining the origin of the Minotaur, sort of. Mostly it was a guy running around in a bed-sheet toga and looking anguished. Or constipated. I couldn't really tell. On to the movie.
Bad guy laughs evilly and gloats over captured princess. She says something spunky. Sinbad sneaks in to steal treasure, gets distracted by princess. He gets discovered. The bad guy attacks. Introduction of Roger the Undying. Who promptly dies. Fights happen. Princess escapes with Sinbad. Other stuff happens. Wash, rinse, repeat. Wait, that's the shampoo directions.
More stuff happens involving running away and fighting and saying clichéd things.
Everyone ends up on Minoa, where the Minoans live, hunting a giant golden head because, you know, GOLD. More fights happen. The villagers go crazy and sprout horns, and start trying to eat everyone, I think. That may have been Roger, who, surprise!, hasn't died, cause he's Undying. Get it? The cute barmaid turns out to be a crazy evil high priestess with horns and rage issues. More fights happen. People die that we're supposed to care about but since I can't remember anyone's name, except Nestor who dies, I didn't care much.
Sinbad slays Algebra in a non-epic battle while the princess looks concerned and does awkward eyebrow things during her close-ups that made no editing sense whatsoever.
Sinbad finally gets to take his shirt off to fight the Minotaur. The fight is so short, it almost wasn't worth waiting for. The evil priestess breaks down crying and everyone feels sorry for her, because she's still very sweet and adorable despite being totally ape-crazy and bloodthirsty and angry.
The golden head apparently explodes in the volcano (did I forget to mention the labyrinth is inside a volcano?) and bits of gold rain down on our fearless hero and the princess and the token minority guy, the only crew member to survive. The token minority guy dances around chanting, "We're rich! It's gold! We're rich!" while Sinbad finally kisses the Princess in her indestructible belly-dancing outfit.
And we celebrated the fact the movie was finally over.
There, I just saved you an hour and a half of pain.


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