USC Preview Screening

USC often gets preview screenings of new releases a few days before they come out. This week’s was “Prince of Persia.”

After standing in a long line, my friend Josh and I got into the theater. We were searched and warned to keep our phones off.

Security stood in the aisles with their night vision goggles in hand. The movie started.


What did “Prince of Persia” teach me? “It’s okay to laugh.”

At one intense moment, the crowd went into an uproar of laughter. My friend Josh whispered “did I miss something?” No, we didn’t. People were laughing at camera choices – extreme zoom-in’s, holding too long on a close up. This wasn’t the tone the movie created, so I was very confused. Then they introduced a sequence with ostriches and I lost it. From then on, I didn’t take the movie too seriously.

Muscles

I was thrown a bit when Jake Gyllenhaal as “Dastan” introduced his Persian accent, but I was quickly fine with it. And yes, he was very attractive in the movie…but I didn’t really care about his character nor his love interest “Tamina” played by Gemma Arterton. The story pushed forward too quickly for me as an audience member to relate to these characters. And forget about geography. I rarely knew where we were in relation to the previous scene or really why we were in this new location.

Fighting

There were too many fight scenes as well. I was not invested in the story enough the first time Dastan was almost killed. I felt like I was ahead of the story most of the time and just waiting for the fight scene to be over.

One plus for all you Brokeback Mountain fans — there is a tent scene…and a horse.

“Prince of Persia” is fun but you’ll feel lost most of the time. Go to the matinee.

I left the screening with a Lego key chain of Tamina. I wonder how the toys will sell from this movie?