If you enjoy action, thrills, and watching men leap around on the tops of buildings, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was designed for you.  If you prefer deeper story lines, well, you might want to try another theater.  Perhaps the latest Shrek movie.

Based on a popular series of Ubisoft video games, action is obviously the centerpiece. In the game you play as Prince Dastan trying to keep a sacred time traveling device away from the clutches of evil.  The folks at Disney did not disappoint there, the movie is indeed action packed and follows a similar storyline.  Fight scenes dominate almost every aspect of the film and the actors make them look quite beautiful, especially when they employ the elements of parkour (“free running” where you learn how to overcome obstacles using your own momentum).

Unfortunately, the storyline suffers a bit.

 Yes, Gemma Arterton is quite good as the beautiful love interest/destiny driven princess, but her actions become tedious and repetitive after a time, almost to the point where I wished Dastan would just leave her in the desert where she belonged.  The story is predictable, as is typical of a Disney flick, but it’s still enjoyable to a degree.

Jake Gyllenhaal is fantastic as Dastan.  He’s dashing, adorable, and lends a certain “je ne sais quoi” to the production as a whole. Ben Kingsley is magnificent as always as Uncle Nizam, one of the only potentially complex characters in the entire movie, and Alfred Molina brings a good amount of (welcome) comic relief to the screen.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time definitely feels like a throwback to simpler times and simpler movies, when sets were made out of Styrofoam and all you needed was the dashing young man to save the beautiful young girl to make a decent picture.  It’s entertaining, it’s safe enough for kids to see (there’s a lot of violence but barely any gore at all), and probably one of the best video game adaptations I’ve seen.  That being said, don’t expect deep thought provoking work, just expect to be entertained.