The danger with any story that includes a time-reversing mechanism is that you risk taking away all of the tension, because any character can just go back in time and get a do-over. Some narratives take advantage of that, and play on the diverging and alternating timelines (Back to the Future, for instance), but only one story in recent memory has ever actually decided to go for the brutal finality of erasing something you held dear, with no hope of ever getting it back. I speak, of course, of the Sands of Time video game. The entire game is spent skillfully building up one of the all-time best video game relationships, with witty dialogue, beautiful vistas and unique circumstances, and in the end the Prince has no choice but to erase all of it in order to save the world from destruction. It's quite a fascinating theme.
But of course, we're talking about the soulless movie cash-in, here, so none of that is even hinted at. In fact, the movie starts with some bullshit quote about how legend has it that some people are bound together through space and time, just so the two characters can conveniently live happily ever after even after the Prince goes back in time to kill the main bad guy before he has time to do anything. I just spoiled the ending , didn't I? Actually, no: the very second the time traveling mechanic is introduced, and the possibility of going back as much as one wants when in the chamber of time is described, everyone in the theatre knew right away what was going to happen. Predictability like this is ridiculously rampant, and every cliché under the sun seems to be included. Crazy comedy relief merchant? Check. Creepy black horsemen with snakes? Check. Doublecrossing brother? Check. Fragile but tough Princess? Check. Nice black guy? Dead.
Usually with a film like this, I'd now mention that despite all this, it's nonetheless entertaining. Not so. If the "From the Producers of Pirates of the Caribbean!" tagline caught your eye, don't expect to see any of the witty dialogue or creative fight scenes that made that series so entertaining. The romance seems to try to have the prince and the princess playfully tease each other, but it ends up feeling flat, tired and unfunny. And the action scenes... well, they're just people swinging at each other randomly for way too long, with some slow motion dagger throwing thrown in every now and then.
At this point, you might expect me to say that at least it's visually beautiful. Well, kind of. The visuals end up feeling like an inferior knockoff of 300, with the exception of some large and beautiful vistas, and 3 or 4 really cool time-travel shots. Still, despite the high production values and large amount of talent required for the visuals, it manages to end up looking uninspired, as if something's just a bit off the whole time.
Basically, this is a tragic waste of the enormous potential that the Sands of Time mythos held.
In a sentence:
Ridiculously predictable, unfunny, soulless, formulaic, clichéd and uninteresting.