I still love sitting down and watching a good old Sinbad movie on a Sunday afternoon, heaven, sheer heaven. They are excellent tails of adventure and strange creatures, and The Golden Voyage of Sinbad even starred the excellent Tom Baker. Superb movies.
Well now it seems their time has come on the wheel of remakes. Hollywood has spun and S, and for casting they didn’t go far, just to R. Coming Soon carry the news from Variety that Keanu Reeves is set to play Sinbad in the latest adventure, and not the cartoon version, but the live action.
Reeves will star as Sinbad the sailor, the legendary character from “The Arabian Nights.” In the film, set in eighth-century China, Sinbad and his shipmates embark on a quest to find the Lamp of Aladdin. Along the way, they meet a beautiful empress and battle fantastical creatures as well as a rebellious Chinese general who threatens the kingdom with his supernatural powers.
Charlie Mitchell is rewriting a script by Cormac and Marianne Wibberly and Tedi Sarafian.
Now I’m not going to make any jokes about Reeves playing this role, merely to say it stinks. If you’ve seen any of the movies before there should be a bit of flair and life about the character, a lovable rogue, not a character voicing the lines as though they were contemplating some deep philosophy while screwing up their brow. I can just see the stiff action now, and it doesn’t sit well.
I guess there is a lot to say about why I should even be judging this, as yet, unmade sequel to the originals and wouldn’t a new take on the whole genre be a good idea? Well perhaps, yet how often have we seen that attempted with an existing movie or movie series only to fall as flat as Reeves voice coach after a day of emotional range teaching?
The Sinbad movies are classic tales of adventure and stop motion animation, stunning animation at that. Now I think it’s fine to replace that with modern CGI, and I actually do think some updates would be good, but for heaven’s sake couldn’t they get an actor with some passion and charm in them? Anyone else out there Sinbad fans? What do you think about it? Is it just me, am I seeing those old movies with a rose tinted helmet on?
