Sinbad and the Minotaur
Sinbad and the Minotaur DVD (Karl Zwicky, Chelsea Films, 2011)
Sinbad! Oh my word! A new Sinbad film! When I was about nine years old and it was Bank Holiday Monday or Easter or some such day when we were off school but bored and driving our Mam crackers, me and our lad would sit utterly gripped by the Harryhausen effects laden masterpieces that were the old Sinbad the Sailor flicks. Along with Clash of the Titans, Mysterious Island, Journey to the Centre of the Earth and a host of other such films that had dinosaurs and lost worlds and Doug MacClure in, our childhoods were shaped and our imaginations fired. Such fabulous entertainment would inspire us, not to mention keep us quiet for a couple of hours, to then spend the rest of the day jumping off beds, fighting, chewing about on the furniture and generally being our hero Sinbad the Sailor. There would always be a beautiful princess (this movie has one) held captive by an evil sorcerer (this movie has one of them as well) who was followed with utter devotion by an almost undefeatable henchmen and a group of buffoonish minions (yup, they’re both here, especially the Poundstretcher Darth Maul cum vampire henchman). Sinbad of course, would lead a band of brave and disparate warriors of all manner of ethnic backgrounds in search of the damsel in distress. You get the academic professor guy who knows the way, you get the disposable no dialogue fellas who will meet a grisly demise like the doomed bloke you’d never seen before on Star Trek who always accompanied Kirk and co to a new world. There’s the obligatory massive bloke who would give his life for Sinbad and just loves a good ruck with his over sized weapon of choice. The bitchy jealous girl is a relatively new invention, but she doesn’t last long … On the rocky road to adventure Sinbad, or whoever we were following, would brandish his weapon with skill and vigour to vanquish bad guys (bad guys are vanquished here, even weird ones with horns sprouting from their foreheads) and loads of monsters – a Cyclops, a multi armed statue that comes to life, a giant bird, a skeleton army (was that Jason?) and many more, the likes of which we had never seen before on our little telly screen. Heady days indeed and sadly, this cheese-fest of a fantasy flick does absolutely nothing to send me back to those glory days. It’s not because the plot is as old as the myths and legends it stretches the boundaries of artistic licence to base the tale upon. It’s also not because the acting has more wood than a porn actor’s communal changing room and the actors emote with the range of a sheet of perspex. Nope. It’s not even the dodgy racial/sexist undertones – Sinbad’s black Man Friday type compadre, the Arabic baddies, the women of the cast who exist as wailing banshee religious nutters or attitude in a boob tube babes (but they still won’t give her a sword). Not even that had me tutting as I’ve seen this sort of thing a million times before and was expecting it. It is quite simply the fact that there are no bloody monsters! Alright, (and I don’t believe that this is a spoiler as you’ve seen the title at the top of this review) there is a minotaur. BUT, and this however is, a big, massive, enormous and very important but. It isn’t even a minotaur! The minotaur was a ferocious beast that consisted of the head of a bull and the body of a man not, and I did Classical Studies at school so I know, a CGI bull covered in horns and spikes that lives in a papier mache labyrinth beneath a volcano with shafts of magical light for eyes. Mrs Kuit, my Classics and Latin teacher would go mental if she saw this … and for that it is unforgivable. Sinbad and the CGI Bull wouldn’t quite convince many kids to bag this DVD, but to be honest with the production values and acting standards of Xena: Warrior Princess (how I miss Xena on Channel 5 … sigh), Hercules and the vast swathe of cheaply made, computer graphics heavy, z grade genre product that the Sci Fi Channel fills up it’s schedules with, I can’t see Sinbad and the Minotaur appealing to many with it’s proper title. It ticks all the boxes if you really are desperate on Easter Monday but you’d be far better off seeking out those Harryhausen classics. Marv Gadgie
