The 7 Adventures of Sinbad

The 7 Adventures of Sinbad

The 7 Adventures of Sinbad

The 7 Adventures of Sinbad

This movie starts out in the high-rise offices of a shipping and oil exploration company. The lead is advised that his ship is somewhere 400 miles east of Madagascar and is being hijacked. A demand for money has been made. The manager of the company flies out to pay the money. In the meantime, the experts of the company talk about how the area is like the "Bermuda Triangle" - ships go missing without warning and electronic devices don't work. Moments later, a kraken (giant octopus) latches onto the ship and drags it and the crew to the bottom of the ocean. The helicopter on which they fly is hit by lightning and the chopper sinks into the ocean. Cut to an island. The lead wakes up and within seconds, finds one of the hijackers from the ship, laying on the beach near him (unconscious). As he tries to wake the hijacker, a giant crab (around 3 meters wide) starts to attack. It is shot many times and all it wants the briefcase containing money; (the gun although emptied at the initial shootout, strangely gets refilled without being done by the owner). As the crab runs away, people who were also on the helicopter appear and ask what is going on - they heard and saw nothing. Move forward, a number of groups meet on this uncharted island and find that there is a series of 7 tasks that must be completed by a hero if a series of cataclysmic problems to face the world are to be resolved. This is confirmed by some pictures found in a cave. Moments after finding the details, the island starts to shake like an earthquake. It then shows that the island is in fact the back of a giant whale which dives into the water, taking the "island" with it. The group are left floating in the middle of nowhere without food or water. Suddenly, they find a large bamboo raft which they can all rest on and in the next scene, they find themselves on yet another island, where they are chased by giant birds as offerings of food for the baby hatchlings. At this point, it just got more absurd and I started fast-forwarding through to see if there were any redeeming aspects of the movie. To my mind, there was only one salvation - the credits at the end - the movie had finished. I gave it 3/10 for the sheer audacity of trying to turn a classic into a modern story and then failing. Don't bother with this one unless you really don't have high expectations of anything and perhaps just want to test the fast forward button on your DVD player is still functioning.

As far as Sinbad movies go, this is pretty wretched. It starts off weak, continues weakly throughout its contrived story, what story there is, and terminates climatically but flat. If this were Made-for-TV, perhaps I could be a bit more forgiving, but even with a tiny infinitesimal budget, it should have been far better than this. Competent talent could not have hurt, but unfortunately for the audience, no one tried that tack. Had they, perhaps invested a little love in the earlier stages, paid the least bit of attention to necessary elements such as wardrobe, staging, props, or details of any kind. The story is weak, the production style is M4TV, the acting (other than the two principals) is elementary at best, and the direction seems to be disorganized and lacking in intent. That might be the fault of the film editor instead of the director, but the direction itself does seem haphazard. All in all? I wish I'd read a book. It rates a 1.7/10 from... the Fiend :.

It's all very well to try and put this movie in perspective and say it was made on a very small budget, in a very short period of time, and say that it has humor in it and competent actors, but even with all of that, it is still poorly made. If you're going to put it in perspective, compare it to the work of Roger Corman. There was a film producer who knew how to turn out a piece of junk that was not merely bearable to watch but was actually entertaining. This film has flashes of entertainment but have you ever tried reading by a light bulb that only works intermittently? It gives you a headache. Speaking of Corman, one of the so-called moments of interest in this film was a reference to his 1957 "Attack of the Crab Monsters". In fact, there are so many references to other films in "7 Adventures" that I think that was the point of the movie. I think the film makers sat around a box of wine and said, "If we stick in enough references film aficionados will think we're clever." Well, I'm sorry to say, it doesn't work unless you come up to a certain standard of quality. It doesn't have to be a very high standard of quality, but it does have to have a narrative coherence, which "7 Adventures" does not.

This movies is hilarious - I was laughing most of the time. It's really good in being bad - pretty much like Tarantino's spoofs of B-rated horror movies, only in adventure genre. And I'm quit sure it's a spoof, these people can't be serious. My favorite part was Sindbad about to go inside volcano for stones and Loa asks him "Do you need anything else?" He doesn't say a word, just reaches out and kisses her, so perfectly cheesy - it's unbelievable. There are zombies, long-lost father, rogue sailors, giant octopuses and even Somali pirates! And everything is done with serious faces and emotions worthy of Twilight Zone (and yes, special effects are just as cheap). Well done!

See, the thing about movie titles is they are the first stop on the advertising trail. They can be mysterious, telling you nothing, luring you in to find out more. Or they can be straightforward - hanging out the shingle to tell you what the film is about. So if a movie is titled the Seven Adventures of Sinbad then it's one of the latter - you know exactly where you stand, Arabian Nights stuff, right? Then take a look at the cast list, and see that the main male character is Adrian Sinbad. Oh dear. This is the biggest case of false advertising since, well, since the last big case of false advertising. Or, to put it in the current parlance, it is a reimagining. Whatever you label it, don't expect a Sinbad movie (not many submarines in the Sinbad stories as far as I can recall). Yes, there are fantasy elements and special effects. Done badly. In a movie with little excitement, a no-name cast who are going to stay that way, and an underwhelming story. This is a poor movie with a con trick for a title.

At first I was really excited to see this movie, reading the reviews and seeing clips of the movie. But I was really disappointed after seeing the movie. The performances by the actors are crap, the plot is too boring and not well written. the action scenes were awesome but they were absolutely short, each of them being about less than 5 minutes long! The beginning was stupid and so was the ending. Details for the monsters were not enough. Even when my aunt saw it both of us agreed that it was Z-grade movie. Don't waste your time watching this lame movie and go watch the stop-motion Ray Harryhausen Sinbad movies instead.

To be honest I wasn't expecting much when I saw The 7 Adventures of Sinbad, but this was worse than expected. Granted it is not the worst SyFy has done, there is one decent special effect and that is the giant bird and Sarah Dessage breathes some life into her role. The rest though is atrocious. The rest of the graphics are best forgotten, a vast majority of them are crude particularly the cyclops and the cheap settings, costumes and photography don't fare much better. The story is also disjointed and predictable, the dialogue laughable and unintentionally funny, the pace sluggish, the soundtrack out of place and intrusive, the direction non-existent and the acting particularly the lead appalling. Overall, a big mess. 1/10 Bethany Cox