Sinbad the Snowboard Dude

Noel Vera

Dreamworks' "Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas" tells of a young
pirate named Sinbad who attempts to steal a glowing blue book
called "The Book of Peace;" he gives up when he learns the book is
held by Prince Proteus, a childhood friend. Proteus is delivering
the book to his home city to "keep the peace" there; when Eris,
goddess of chaos, steals the book and pins the blame on Sinbad,
Proteus insists on Sinbad's innocence and offers himself as hostage.
Sinbad, along with his crew, the sailors of the ship "Chimera," and
Marina--Proteus' tomboy fiancée who somehow snuck onboard--must
quest to the ends of the earth, literally, to recover the stolen
volume, restore his honor, and save Proteus from execution.

Just that plot outline alone makes you want to ask--this is the
story of Sinbad the Sailor? Sinbad was a merchant not a pirate, a
man of little sentiment but plenty of cunning who somehow found
himself in the middle of extraordinary adventures. As told in "A
Thousand and One Nights," especially Sir Richard Burton's
magnificent translation, they are a series of tales simply told, yet
the accumulation of detail and color is such that they have been
much-loved and repeated for centuries--or, at least, before film
producer Jeffrey Katzenberg decided to leave Disney and form
Dreamworks.

Sinbad's adventures were the basis of many a movie fantasy, most
notably those produced and with special effects developed by stop-
motion genius Ray Harryhausen. Harryhausen's "The Seventh Voyage of
Sinbad" and succeeding Sinbad films may not have been faithful to
the source text (though they are more faithful than this movie), but
his stop-motion sequences had a delicate charm that fit the tales
perfectly (the ideal edition should have stills from his pictures).

Dreamworks has taken the tales, shaken out all the enchantment, and
retinkered it for the American adolescent market: Sinbad isn't just
a pirate, he's a young pirate with the virile (if indistinct) voice
of Brad Pitt (the eternal adolescent), huge, pearly-white smile, and
useful skills in extreme sports like precision rope-swinging and
snowboarding. Worse, he's sensitive--under that charming braggadocio
lie the quivering heart of a vulnerable dude. We learn that years
ago he left Proteus (Joseph Fiennes, whose voice drips sensitivity)
because his friend was engaged to marry Marina (Catherine Zeta-
Jones, trying for tomboy sexiness), and he presumably can't face the
prospect of his best friend being married away (for the sake of
wholesomeness it's explained that it's Marina he really wants).

Dreamworks dresses "Sinbad" in admittedly magnificent clothes--full-
motion animation, snazzy light effects, an orchestral score (in
digital sound) in the background. Sometimes the light effects are
too snazzy, the score too orchestrally loud; they drown out the
simpleminded narrative that pulls (more or less) the film together.
There's also the standard-issue action sequences shaped like
amusement park rides (the easier, I suppose, to tie them into the
I'm-betting-already-on-drawing-boards Dreamworksland): the ship
whizzing through icebergs in a series of thrilling hairbreadth
escapes (though if every sequence in every action movie is a
hairbreadth escape, how thrilling can it be?); Sinbad slaloming down
snowslopes in all his righteous glory (this would look good on an
IMAX screen, with teens strapped to simulator snowboards, air-
conditioned air blowing from all sides). State-of-the-art technology
expertly tied to up-to-the-minute marketing, with very little real
magic to be seen in all this.

I found Dreamwork's previous major foray into animation, "Shrek,"
much better…and not necessarily because "Shrek" is in now-
fashionable "3-D" animation (fully computer generated animation,
with rounded shapes and shadowed corners) as opposed to "Sinbad's"
largely (and anachronistically) "2-D" animation (basically, hand-
painted cels). "Shrek" gains considerable energy from the nasty
Disney-bashing (Katzenberg left Disney with considerably acrimony),
and from a full deck of genuinely funny vocal performances--Mike
Myers, John Lithgow, Eddie Murphy, among others; by way of
comparison, the only actor who actually distinguishes herself
in "Sinbad" is Michelle Pfeiffer, doing her purring Catwoman routine
as the aptly named "goddess of chaos."

Possibly I'm being too demanding, this being a mere summertime kid's
film, an escape from summer heat…but the alternate title of "A
Thousand and One Nights" is "The Arabian Nights"--and I for one see
little that is Arabic about the picture. This Sinbad is a
whitewashed sailor: he comes from the general area of Syracuse, with
no mention of Baghdad; his friends are named "Marina" or "Proteus,"
his ship is christened the "Chimera"--hardly Muslim names. His
opponent is a generic "goddess of chaos," instead of (as was common
in the "Arabian Nights") some djinn or afreet or evil vizier, and
the object of their struggles is a silly blue book that glows in the
dark (What is that thing--a cure for the common cold? A formula for
transmuting lead to gold? The script of a far better "2-D animated"
film--Hayao Miyazaki's "Spirited Away," perhaps?).

I can understand the thinking behind this, somewhat--since the
bombing of the Twin Towers and the war with both Afghanistan and
Iraq, all things Islamic are currently unpopular in the United
States, and Dreamworks' executives must have felt that
everything "bad" about "Sinbad" must forthwith be exorcised (I'm
surprised the actual name survived). Dreamworks may have missed an
opportunity here, however, when it kowtowed to popular sentiment: a
chance to take one of the glories of Islamic literature and present
it--djinns, afreets, praises to Allah and all--as is, without
apologies, as a way of encouraging understanding and respect for a
culture that may often reject things American (and Hollywood) but is
nevertheless still a rich, beautiful culture. It might have been a
wonderful gesture; it might have given us the finest adaptation
of "The Arabian Nights," or of Sinbad's adventures, to date; all
that was needed was the honesty and courage to see it through. Too
much to ask for, I suppose…

(Originally printed in Businessworld, Sept. 5, 2003)

(Comments? Email me at noelbotevera@...)