SINBAD: THE FIFTH VOYAGE (2014)

SINBAD: THE FIFTH VOYAGE (2014)

Tagline:  I think they covered all you need to know in the title. 

(Action, Adventure, Fantasy) [PG-13]

Not including THE 7 ADVENTURES OF SINBAD and SINBAD AND THE WAR OF THE FURIES which both attempted to update the SINBAD legend, we have only had two films try to recapture the magic the SINBAD stories are worthy of. These include Manu Bennett’s SINBAD AND THE MINOTAUR and this damn thing SINBAD: THE FIFTH VOYAGE. 

The plot here is pretty simple. A Sultan’s daughter is taken during a magic show by an evil magician. Sinbad (who loves her) decides to go try and rescue her braving the desert of magic and unimaginable creatures to bring her to safety. Can Sinbad overcome what it will take to not only rescue his love but save the kingdom from pending evil? 

Regarding the special effects, everything is really basic regarding the creatures and this was completely intended. The idea was to shoot this film using stop motion like the great Sinbad movies that came before it. Sadly only a few of the designs are any good, and the rest of pretty freakin terrible. I know what they were trying to do here, so I had a little patience in that department and there are actually some visuals that are decent, but the bad parts are just really bad. 

Another big issue was the acting. Shahin Sean Solimon has only been in 3 movies and his take on  Sinbad is rough. They did get Patrick Stewart to narrate this movie, but even that is not worth watching this movie for. As a Sinbad fan, I really wanted to love this thing and I get the stop motion stuff, but if you are going to try and pull that off, you need to deliver great design work and have everything else flow naturally with those elements. None of that works outside of a few. 

For a b-movie parts of this are okay, however, it’s not a movie I’d ever watch again and it lacks emotional acting, any hints of humor, or even likable characters to root for. What was clever was Sinbad’s dealings with the genie in the movie, but that gets jacked up by dragging storytelling and entire sequences that don’t even seem like they should have been part of the same movie. 

Because this is a bit of a love letter to stop motion, I can’t give it a 1, but it does deserve a 2 out of 7. Calling anything Sinbad ought to warrant far more care and quality than we’ve been getting.

GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF GIANT FLICK FILMS AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY. 

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