Sinbad: The Fifth Voyage

This may be a hard one to describe, because the words I need to properly express how awful this film was do not exist yet.

You will find better quality and fewer life regrets in a Taco Bell burrito.

“Sinbad: the Fifth Voyage” does everything you’re not supposed to do in film making, starting with its use of narration.

I was always taught narration is the sign of a weak script. Even with Patrick Stewart’s timeless voice flipping the pages through this tale, the story was too weak to be salvaged by anything.

The story of this movie is too simple and overplayed. Sinbad (Shahin Sean Solimon) is a famous sailor engaged to the sultan’s daughter. The Deev, an evil sorcerer, freezes the sultan’s palace and kidnaps the princess. When Sinbad discovers his love interest is gone, he and his merry crew embark on an epic adventure to rescue her.
It wouldn’t be an epic adventure without a few monsters. But when they turn out to be Claymation monsters, you lose my respect.

Claymation is only acceptable in “Elf,” and the 1960s Christmas films ABC Family plays on loop throughout December.

As if the Play-Doh cyclops and scorpion weren’t bad enough, this film had the worst green screen effects I’ve seen since “Wizards of Waverly Place.”

The sound levels were unstable and inconsistent. It was painfully obvious when they were using different audio tracks when switching between shots.

The greatest sin of all took place when the camera zoomed in on a shot and it shook as if the operator was pushing the zoom like a button on a video game controller.

That shot even making the cut shows extremely lazy editing, and it isn’t the only proof. There were multiple useless shots that seemed shoved in there for the sake of timing to match the music flow.

Then, there were the horrendous camera filters. This film tried to emphasize the
scenes that took place in the past, but it didn’t work. It looked like they let a 13-year-old edit the film on Instagram.

As for the acting, Sinbad was the weakest hero I’ve ever seen. For playing a dude whose woman has been kidnapped and is battling giant clay creatures, Solimon is annoyingly chill. He has three different facial expressions throughout the entire 89-minute film, and two of them aren’t shown until the last four minutes.

The rest of the cast was just as unimpressive.

Patrick Stewart’s narration was the only thing this film had going for it. And I’m still wondering what bet he must have lost to agree to put his name on this project.

The only good this film could do is if it’s put in a film school textbook in the “What Not To Do” chapter.

Just take your $8 and get yourself that burrito and some Pepto.