Sinbad: The Fifth Voyage (2014)

Good start, but then it gets ruined

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Yes, the majority of the plot seems to have ended up on the cutting room floor, the director uses filters instead of narrative, the acting is risible and the flow erratic. Not even the great Sir Patrick's voice is an asset. BUT The Harryhausen-esque monsters are a hoot.The whole thing seems to have been filmed in a small green-screen room for the price of a decent family meal. Accept and embrace it for what it is - a silly, cheap, nonsensical piece of trash with ridiculous monsters in it. My DVD copy cost 50 pence. A fair price.

SINBAD: THE FIFTH VOYAGE is a cheap retelling of the famous sailor that comes across as a tribute to the effects-filled Ray Harryhausen movies of old. Indeed, the various foes that Sinbad and his crew end up fighting seem to have been animated via good old-fashioned stop motion, just like in the old days, with the addition of some CGI to smooth the edges. It certainly makes for a lot of fun and brings back some of the glory days of the likes of THE 7TH VOYAGE OF SINBAD and JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS.Unfortunately, the rest of the film is very bad and little above the level of a homemade amateur flick like SAMURAI COP 2: DEADLY VENGEANCE. The whole thing plays out on a green screen with some terrible CGI effects and even worse acting. I didn't mind the lead actor Shahin Sean Soliman, who also wrote and directed, as he's unusually for this type of film an actor of genuinely Persian decent, but the rest is pretty much a waste of time.

If you are a Sinbad fan don't buy or watch this movie. I have been a Sinbad fan for over 50 years and have seen many Sinbad movies, but this one shouldn't even have the name on it. In fact they don't even pronounce it correctly...it sounds like "sandbag" in the movie. After watching it I was amazed that Patrick Stewart had anything to do with it. The special effects were a joke. You'd think it was made in the 40s or 50s instead of just last year. Even the blooper reel wasn't funny. I also should have had a hint about it when I didn't recognize any of the actors. I like to see new ones and I hope some of them get a second chance with a better script. The director should go back to playing terrorists or something like that. Again, don't waste your time or money, even if you have a Sinbad movie collection like I do. It won't be a part of it.

There are several fake reviews for this movie, attempting to counter the 1 stars with a bunch of 10/10 reviews. Be warned, this movie is one of the worst ever made. It's not subjective, it's just a fact. There have been worse movies but they were all made in the 70's about workplace safety.There are several aspects of this movie that are terrible.The acting is on par with that which you might find in a play put on hastily by teenagers, who forget to make a script... or a plot. The script, if one exists, is the kind of thing that makes the likes of 10,000 BC or Cats & Dogs look like masterworks. It mostly consists of one character telling everyone what is happening then another saying "oh yes, that is happening", to which a third character will exclaim that "I have also noticed it happening, and this is how I feel about it." Which may or may not be accompanied by an expression, which is supposed to convey an emotion but somehow doesn't.The story was clearly not story boarded. That's the only conclusion I can come up with as to why giant swathes of the plot are skipped over from scene to scene. I have actually advised several film students to watch the movie as a warning, to illustrate what happens if you try and make a movie without properly planning it beforehand. You end up with missing scenes. In the case of Sinbad, you are missing at least 20 minutes, since the movie purports to be 89 minutes long but is actually only 69.Editing. It's one of those jobs that is utterly thankless. If you do a good job, nobody notices but if you do a bad job, you ruin everything. As an illustration of what you can expect, we have a scene in the movie where, not once but twice, the camera has a slow, lingering shot of what we're told is a honey comb (people who have seen a honey comb know that they rarely look so much like a throbbing member though), the shot is accompanied by tense, combat style music. It is surreal. As if to compliment that, we have combat scenes, scored by gentle, Sunday strolling music. Effects. Much has been made of the effects by the fake reviews but they really, really shouldn't. The effects are just plain bad. They are bad, to the extent, that the 1958 Sinbad movie, which featured the stunning work of Ray Harryhausen, is leagues ahead, not 50+ years behind. The idea of paying homage is fantastic and certainly stop-motion, with the modern tools available can really be brought to the next level, it just hasn't been here. It has dramatically missed the next level, fallen short and landed in a vat of angry alligators.In short, the movie is a disaster, the likes of which most will be lucky to never see. For everyone else, watch this movie, only so that you might warn others.Please insert your own sign-off pun, based on movie quality, containing the words 'sin' and 'bad'................................. ...............here.