Film: ‘Mummy v/s Sinbad’; Cast: Manu Bennett, Holly Brisley and Steven Grives; Director: Karl Zwicky; Rating: 1/2*
Sometimes what you see on screen is so bad you are left speechless. ‘Mummy v/s Sinbad’ is one such film. It is so bad that the Indian distributors even changed its original Australian name of ‘Sinbad and the Minotaur’ to prevent cinegoers from finding out its true worth. But you definitely do find out, especially that there is indeed no ‘mummy’ in the film.
After stealing a 1,000-year-old scroll from the desert camp of the evil sorcerer Al-Jibar (Steven Grives), Sinbad (Manu Bennett) leads his mates to discover the ancient golden head of the Colossus of Rhodes. Thwarting his attempts are Al-Jibar and an unexpected monster, a Minotaur.
The film unsuccessfully tries to marry the Arabian Nights legend of Sinbad with the Greek legend of the Minotaur. To have successfully done that would have required skills in all department of filmmaking. ‘Mummy…’ is notable for its amazing lack of any.
The film is noteworthy in one aspect — helping aspiring filmmakers realize it is indeed possible to fail in almost every area of filmmaking.
An action film is usually ‘easy cheesy’ fun. You get an actor who can fight, weave perils around him, find him a worthy adventure, good friends and a sexy girl and you roll camera. Turns out it is not that easy after all, especially not for the makers of this film.
They consistently get everything wrong. First of all, the hero cannot pronounce a word decently, the girls in the film look like city teenagers out for a stroll in the jungle, the special effects are atrocious and there is no sense of direction for the story or camera movement.
Everything is all over the place, leaving the film literally nowhere.
This TV film, however, gets a few things right. The muscles of its hero and the skin show of its females. It is also sympathetic to the ‘minorities’ by showing a black character as Sinbad’s best friend. But if you have a 15 minute short film stretched to 86 minutes, nothing really matters but your boredom.
Sinbad in the film keeps saying one word repeatedly ‘details’. It would have been nice if the makers would have taken his advice.
