User Reviews

Modern day parodies seem to be in demand these days. Nothing wrong with that, provided the screenwriters can come up with an imaginative and original story.

However, there was nothing funny in this movie, or imaginative, or exciting. The different ways the producers tried to mimic Sinbad's adventures taken from the time honored fairy tale, or past movies, proved a mockery and charade in this one. I watched the preview clip on Youtube and read about Asylum, the company producing and marketing the film. I confess I was hopeful and thought better. After about 45 minutes of watching, I thought to myself: what a shame and a waste - in this day and age, you people must think we movie watchers are morons with mentalities of 2-year olds.

Whose idea was it that Sinbad (in name only) is a company owner of oil tankers, one of which is hijacked by what seems some Black (Somalian?) pirates, and while on a rescue mission, said tanker is attacked and sunk by what looked like a gigantic crab? Then for no reason here our chopper crashes into the sea and we are marooned on an uncharted island with a handful of survivors from the ship, including (guess?) the pirate leader who has now become our ally? At the risk of writing a spoiler, I won't say more, but you can pretty much imagine the jamboree of hastily written and badly scripted plot lines, followed by some of the worst acting I've ever seen on the big screen. The cgi graphics were terrible. They must have gone on a shoestring budget to make these. Oh, and how do you fight off and kill a 20-foot cyclops intent on eating you with just a rope, which you somehow mysteriously seemed to come up with in your shipwrecked state? I'll leave you to guess that one without watching the movie. (What?)

I'd watch this one if there was nothing else to do with my time, and I'm prepared to play brain-dead. Definitely one of the stupidest movies I've seen throughout the years.

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.

SYNOPSIS: In this modern day retelling of the Sinbad myth, Adrian Sinbad is a billionaire oil shipping magnate, the headstrong descendant of a long line of great mariners. When his flagship oil tanker is hijacked by Somalian pirates, Sinbad rushes to the rescue.

But the tanker is pulled underwater by a giant squid, and sinks into a deep sea crater where a supernatural being of terrible power resides. Meanwhile Sinbad's helicopter is struck by lightning in a storm, and crashes into the sea.

Sinbad comes to on a strange tropical island, and is immediately attacked by a monstrous crab three times his size. Narrowly escaping, Sinbad bands together with a ragged group of survivors: the helicopter pilot, his fetching science officer, the bitter tanker captain and the Somalian pirate leader (these last two, mortal enemies).

But when he meets Loa, a beautiful jungle warrior, she shows him cave paintings which foretell the end of mankind. Sinbad must complete seven ordeals, or the world will be destroyed by Elmec Ishu, the supernatural being enraged by the sunken tanker. (Though the tanker hasn't yet spilled its full 130 million gallons of oil into the sea).

A sudden earthquake strikes - and Sinbad and the group are plunged into the ocean, only to discover that the island is actually the back of a giant whale (as per the original mythology). But they're not in the water long before pterodactyls swoop down and carry them away to feed to their babies.

They next encounter a cyclops, seductive sirens, and a bloodthirsty cult led by Loa's insane father (a la Apocalypse Now, in one of the best sequences of the movie). The group dies off one by one, while romance blossoms between Sinbad and Loa. Meanwhile, back on the mainland, the world is shaken by earthquakes and tsunamis; Emlec Ishu is increasingly angry about the tanker parked in its living room.

Sinbad descends into a volcano in search of otherworldly crystals which hold the key to escaping the island. Nearly killed by a towering lava demon, he and Loa manage to flee with the crystals - which release superheated gas when water touches them - and finally get off the island, by means of an old hot air balloon.

Returning to civilization, Sinbad's final ordeal is to somehow raise the tanker and thus avert the coming apocalypse. Setting out on a suicide mission, Sinbad and Loa pilot a small submarine four miles underwater to the tanker. But en route, the first of the tanker's bulkheads finally ruptures - spilling 450,000 gallons of oil - and causing Elmec Ishu to unleash his full wrath on humanity, in the form of armies of strange waterspouts which destroy everything in their path.

Meanwhile, the sub is chased down and captured by the giant squid. But using the sub's external nozzle, Sinbad vacuums up several oil bubbles in the water outside, thus convincing the intelligent squid to release them. Sinbad and Loa reach the tanker, and start to drill into the seabed below it, where a seam of the otherworldly crystals is buried. As the waterspouts make landfall, and with the sub's power and air reserves nearing zero, the drill punches through and floods the crystals with sea water. Gas geysers erupt from the sea-floor, filling the tanker with air, causing it to rise to the surface. The world is saved, but Sinbad and Loa are dying, out of air four miles underwater. Until Elmec Ishu appears, and summons the giant squid back, to carry the sub to the surface.

REVIEW:

I thought this movie had a lot going for it. There's moments of ingenuity, and real wit - Sinbad's reaction to the crab battle is kind of priceless.

Biggest criticism: visual effects. As some of the other posters have mentioned they are not that good. The cyclops looks weird and roided out, and the squid only has six tentacles?!? Also not enough was made of the lava demon; it's a potentially cool creature but I wanted a lot more out of the scene.

But let's put this in context. The budget for the movie is listed at $500k. Are you kidding?!?! What the filmmakers did for that amount is astonishing; there are probably hundreds of visual effects shots, which cost tons of money, so how did they do it?!

Also I know for a fact that Asylum movies are shot on a very short schedule of around 2 weeks. So to even compare a movie shot in 2 weeks for $500k, with today's $100 million blockbusters is ridiculous. The scope and sweep of this film, the production value they got for that tiny budget, is actually quite amazing. The cinematography is beautiful, the locations are exotic, the action is non-stop.

Performances are strong too. Muldoon's Sinbad has real heart and a dash of Tony Stark, and never loses touch with the humor. Bo Svenson nails it as the scheming CEO. But the biggest pleasure is Sarah Desage, who is not only smoking hot, but gives a nuanced performance as Loa. Look at the scenes between Loa and her father - it's emotionally rich work. She is someone to watch.

Script and direction are solid. While this isn't what you would call a character driven piece, the two writers/directors Hayflick and Silver show a command of the dramatic and visual storytelling. The camera is fluid, editing is solid. And there are some real zingers in the dialogue. The movie definitely has a brain.

So rather than hate on the filmmakers for making a movie that no, does not stack up to Avatar, I give them kudos for making an inspired, tiny budget action/adventure movie with a great spirit. It's supposed to be fun, and it is.

One of the best Asylum releases to date, if not the best.

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 :.

I have to say that I raised my rating when I found out what the budget had been on this film. I'm amazed that they were able to pull together what they did on that kind of money. And that kind of time. The problem is: This isn't porn people; you actually need a coherent film for an audience to appreciate the effort.

I disagree with some reviewers' points and agree with others: I actually viewed this film twice; the first time I was sleepy and thought I'd just dozed off for parts of the film, but I was wrong. It really was as disjointed as I remembered. I think the biggest problems in this movie are due to bad editing which affects the continuity, the flow of the story, and the viewer's understanding of the film. This certainly could have been a result of having such a short budget. One bad shot could throw everything off if they don't have the budget to shoot it again. Then you have to choose: keep in the bad shots? Or have holes in the story? Both? Budgeting issues explains a lot of the problems with this movie. Equipment and professional film is expensive. And you're making a film that needs a lot of special affects which will shoot huge holes in any movie budget, plus you're shooting outside meaning you have to deal with the weather, let's give them an "A" for effort. It was a good idea. A "D" for editing. How about extra credit for finishing the film at all?

Caution Spoilers: I think the biggest problem with the film was lack of continuity and coherence between scenes. This is the reason there is so much confusion about the story and leads to many of the complaints. For example, Sinbad's female sidekick is apparently murdered--it's only implied, and only vaguely so, but there doesn't seem to be any mention of what actually happened to her, and no real reaction to her loss (or disappearance). There is one mention of her dying later on, but they never say what happened to her. When did they even find her? Did they go back to that spot?? What happened filmmakers? Did you run out of film? Audiences like coherent reasonably linear story lines. You can't just have characters--especially someone that was supposed to mean a lot to the Hero, just disappear without any coherent reaction or reason.

I thought the script was actually pretty good and they did try to fit in Sinbad's 7 traditional tasks in a modern setting which showed imagination. Criticisms in this regard are misguided. Again, I think the holes were due more to bad editing than the script. Or someone wasn't paying any attention to the continuity of the story. You can tell the story visually; audiences still need to be shown one way or the other. Verbally or visually. They were very bad about explaining the setup, which confused viewers.

Even watching it twice I was confused about his tasks and what the heck they had to do with the ship on the bottom of the ocean. Yes, I got that it was threatening to leak and the sea monster was mad about that--but the sea monster sank the boat! They never explain that, or even offer a theory. And I never got just what his business partner had to do with the pirates. Why did he set the ship up? Holes.

But this part bugs me, and this is an issue with the storyline. Maybe with the script. Why the heck would they need special alien rocks to fire up the hot air balloon? There was plenty of fuel on that island. Yet that was supposedly the only way to get off the island. These aspects of the story simply made no sense. In this aspect, the script fell down--or are we simply missing scenes that filled us in? But there was some well-done dialog, and many parts of the film that worked well. It was just very uneven.

The special effects certainly showed the restraints of their budget, but I thought the sea creature--a giant squid-like thing (not a crab), was pretty good. As was the crab on land. The sirens looked more like Zombies--and their makeup was unevenly applied, again pointing up a lack of continuity and consistency, and I don't even remember the Cyclops! I liked the lava demon; I thought that was one of the best effects. The water spout type things were interesting, but they left me confused. Was that from the squid? Was he a god or something? And I still don't get why HE sank the boat and then freaked out about the oil.

I think the best part of the film was the relationships, that's where the film was strongest. Of particular note was the explanation of the girl being on the island, and her sad relationship (or lack of) with her crazy father. I thought that part was interesting as was the way he controlled the men on the island. As cultic and nuts as that seems it unfortunately has some precedence in real life. Though it seems that the Somalian pirates succumbed way too quickly---just what was in that water? Or did the sirens do that? I'm not dumb, and I saw this film twice. So if I can't figure this out you know there's a problem. Or did I just doze off--again? Where did that scene go?

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.

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!

Here's a Sinbad clearly modeled after Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark; a wealthy corporate honcho, sans super armor suit, who finds himself lost on an island filled with giant creatures that really don't do much of anything.

Then, later, it turns into a kind of military rebel movie, with some unexciting pit fighting overseen by a Dan Haggerty-looking dude who appears to have been pulled out of a crack house and given a few lines to read. He dies, but you won't care, because you really won't understand why he was in this thing in the first place.

The creatures really don't do much more than Harryhausen's did 50 years ago, which is to blink their eyes and growl a lot. But they are occasionally impressive, especially the flying dragon-type things that eat one guy but are apparently frightened away by sharpened sticks and thrown pebbles. However, the devilish monster protecting some mystical volcano stones looks like a heavy metal LP cover come to badly animated life.

Oh, and the stones: They hold the secret to escaping the island; which is to say, they can get really hot, for no apparent reason. So, Sinbad uses them to create steam and power a hot-air balloon and fly away. Why, I don't know, FIRE would have worked just as well demands a suspension of my disbelief this movie didn't work hard enough to accomplish.

The last third of the movie is so incomprehensible, it's quite likely it was written and directed by someone who speaks no English at all, and who was sniffing glue. It has something to do with a giant squid, Sinbad in a submarine, a bad guy clearly inspired by Jeff Bridges' villain in "Iron Man," poorly rendered tornadoes, an earthquake scene the producers lifted from one of Asylum's dopey disaster movies, and, just for kicks and giggles, Armageddon.

Worth the couple of bucks I paid for it, for the few laughs I got at its expense. Only fools and Dan Haggerty would pay more.