Sinbad et l'oeil du tigre

This is a good, mild, entertaining family-oriented fantasy movie. SFX by Harryhausen are good era & genre-wise. However this movie is not quite a pure SFX extravaganza, but belongs better to a fairy tale, say Krull or else. You get many conventional subplots: * good prince is turned into a baboon while his evil stepmother wants to see her own son becoming Calif. * belle princess in love with the brave sailor Sinbad. * a secret hermit from a mysterious island. * mummies out of hell, giant tigers, a robot minotaur. * only six moons to counter the spell. * a trip through the north pole. etc etc. A nice movie, very easily watchable.

Okay, so the film isn't a masterpiece for anyone involved, but the DVD is worth the price for Harryhausen fans. I won't reiterate a fairly lame plot but to say that a prince is morphed into a baboon and Sinbad must find a way to correct this untimely development in order to repay a friend and win the hand of the lovely Jane Seymour. All in all, the film turns out to be rather entertaining once Patrick Troughton makes it on-screen to flesh-out the dialogue. Overshadowing the movie's multiple shortcomings, however, is the always inspiring stop-motion work of Ray Harryhausen. The Trog and sabre-tooth are two fine creations and while we don't see anything on par with the 7 skeletons in "Jason & the Argonauts" or Medusa from "Clash of the Titans" there are some great moments with other creatures. While to be treasured as one of Harryhausen's last films the DVD also includes the added bonus of "The Ray Harryhausen Chronicles", an in-depth documentary narrated by Leonard Nimoy featuring a bio and interviews with today's FX masters. This and other features combine to make an otherwise average fantasy/adventure film worth a look--if you're a Harryhausen fan and you've got a DVD player. For all the extra features, I'll give the DVD a 6/10.

I haven't seen many Sinbad movies, but this one I liked very much. I remember seeing the preview when I was younger. And I said to myself, "This movie looks like fun!" The animation in the movie gave it plenty of character. And Sinbad(Patrick Wayne) was a fine man as well. The witch(Margaret Whiting) was a very fiendish woman. She makes all other witches look like amateurs, especially when she used her sorcery. Her only flaw is when her re-transformation from a bird didn't complete itself. It's when her right foot is still a bird's. The growth formula was something when one of the bees drank it. and was later killed by Sinbad. Jane Seymour does a great job playing Princess Farah. She really knows how to control, and tame things that Sinbad couldn't do. The giant walrus, the golden minotaur, and a the vicious saber-tooth tiger gives the movie something to see. I think this movie is very watchable, and very entertaining. I wished it had gotten better reviews than it did. 3 out of 5 stars!

(Minor Spoilers)

Let's be honest and a tad realistic about this film, shall we?

By TODAY'S standards, this is a "cheesy" kinda film compared to what technology we've got. And I think at the time of this release we had gotten "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and "Star Wars" so our expectation levels were running higher for "special effects" and "whimsy" than this.

But I still can get entertainment out of this film.

How?

By remembering how old I was when I saw it and WHOM I was with when I saw it. My family.

I was a child. This film wasn't in my all time top ten, but it was...fun. It was one of those movies local channels threw on Sunday afternoon before or after a televised ball game..or when a ball game was rained out. Come on, admit it..you remember!

And that's the point. This film's special effects were nice..not spectacular..not even up to Ray Harryhausen's standards, but the Harryhausen mark was there which made it entertaining (Admit it, you LOVED the walrus scene!! How 'bout that Cyclops?!?! As a child this was all good! You remember!!).

For very young girls, this Sinbad was REALLY nice to look at back then. For the very young guys, so was Miss Jane Seymour and Miss Taryn Power. Then there was the story which was kinda fun, the adventure which was kinda whimsical and the happy ending where the bad guys got theirs'.

This was done at a time of assuming children would love this kinda stuff. Back then, more would have. Now, most children don't even think "Spy Kids" can give them a buzz.

This movie is about childhood and remembering what it was like to have an imagination and watch a story unfold for nothing but the sheer enjoyment of it...the fun of eating "Good 'n' Plenty", "Snowcaps", "Malted Milk Balls" and Popcorn without thinking about calorie content to make this even more fun to watch...and the "eye candy" of Wayne, Seymour and Power help a so-so story that's really better than a lot of stuff I've seen today that they charge ya $10 a ticket for! Parents may not have liked it as much as the children but that too is part of the fun!

Have a heart when watching this. Watch this as a "fun" romp....as remembering when families watched shows together (..or in my case my dad mumbling under his breath about how the game was due on and he had to sit through this 'crap' first!), the pre-teen tingles of watching a handsome Wayne, young Seymour and/or Power (...ya know...before having breast implants and weighing 95 pounds was mandatory in Hollywood for women to do this kind of film work?!?) and telling your parents you were REALLY interested in the story...really.

Maybe I've got a more "nostalgic" view about this film..its because I'm not looking for academy award winning material with this kind of film, but it does its job of...entertaining...and if you have children and want them to be children for a tad longer, this may be the film fare for them. Or just for you, if you want to curl up with some popcorn and remember "the good old movie fluff days" where special effects were done by hand and stop motion photography by the "grand-daddy" of the genre and a Sinbad movie where Sinbad actually looked like you might imagined him to look like back then and evil characters who were evil and got theirs....pretty much simplified.

Open your mind and when you have a moment...enjoy. Don't take it seriously just sit back... watch...and HAVE FUN..with your children, as a family.

After having re-visited Harryhausen's Sinbad trilogy recently, I have decided that this one, overall, compares very favourably with the other two. It is the most epic of the trilogy and has the most ambitious storyline (POSSIBLE SPOILER) involving a voyage into a lost world hidden behind the ice sheets at the North Pole (no doubt an idea partly influenced by Disney's 1974 'The Island at the Top of the World').

The creatures in this one are the least spectacular of the trilogy (THE SEVENTH VOYAGE & THE GOLDEN VOYAGE have better and more spectacular ones) but Harryhausen's artistry is as great as ever and he really should have been given a special accolade for imbuing Kassim the Baboon and the Troglodyte with so much character. It really is remarkable watching them 'act'. Demanding kids may find the creatures disappointing but now that I am older I can appreciate the fine work that went into realising them. Harryhausen's puppet work possesses a tangibility that CGI is only just now coming close to emulating.

I also find that I care about the characters in this film and what happens to them. The woodenness of the acting and the dialogue of the previous 2 films in some way stopped me from caring very much. This picture does not suffer in the same way, as both acting and dialogue, while nothing special, are better here. Jane Seymour is also very easy on the eye and is the best looking Sinbad girl of them all.

Overall, highly recommended for young (but not very young) children and for adults who were kids when it first came out and want to recapture some nostalgic vibes. I feel that this one is best for a sense of epic adventure and empathetic characters, THE SEVENTH VOYAGE OF SINBAD is best for the monsters and THE GOLDEN VOYAGE OF SINBAD is quite possibly the best of the trilogy overall.