Gonna dance ’til I can’t dance no more! Clack them bones!
Sinbad: The Fifth Voyage (2014) is a rather limp addition to the long and sometimes gamy Sinbad collection of tales. Let me see if I can remember this properly:
Sinbad and crew – a small crew compared to some of his tales – are sailing into his home port of Baghdad, laden with jewels & plunder, but something’s not right. Ships are not moving about, the lights are not right this evening. He rushes to the palace, where he finds the guards, and, indeed, everyone is frozen. In fact, it’s quite the chilly reception.
But the court magician – or witch – is still mobile, and now that Sinbad is back, she uses one of his collection of talismans to unfreeze everyone. Everyone, that is, except for Sinbad’s love, the Princess. In flashback, we learn she was abducted by a visiting wizard, or Deev, and taken back to his island for a ceremonial decanting of her soul, the better to consume it for his own fell purposes.
At this point, I was sort of hoping Sinbad would cough delicately and say, What island did you say? Didn’t we just invade and sack that one on the way home, crew? He’s going to be one mad wizard.
Sadly, nothing so clever comes out of Sinbad’s mouth. Indeed, I don’t believe Sinbad ever says or does anything clever, which is a pity because that’s part of the charm of Sinbad, along with being a lady’s man and a slight rapaciousness – it’s his core. Now, I must admit, he is clever, just once, but it’s not spectacular, and I shan’t recite it.
Anyways, Sinbad & crew make their way to the island, trek through it, the crew gets mangled, the Princess rescued, the secret of Sinbad and the Princess is revealed, and the Deev is sorely disappointed, after chewing the landscape thoroughly.
There’s little reason to see this movie, unless you’re a Ray Harryhausen fan. Harryhausen, a pioneer in stop-action special-effects, is more or less honored in this 2014 movie by having all the monsters presented in the same style as Harryhausen’s – choppy stop-action. But while it was leading edge in Harryhausen’s day, now it’s better done by the gang who did Chicken Run (2000), and more distracting than anything else.
Add in some indifferent acting and a script that needed three more rewrites, and this, despite some lovely cinematography, was a definite disappointment.
