Sinbad and the Minotaur

Sinbad (Manu Bennett) steals the Chronicles of the King Minos from the camp of the evil sorcerer Al-Jibar (Steven Grives) with the location of the golden head of the Colossus of Rhodes. He also saves the slave Tara (Holly Brisley) and brings her to his ship.

Sinbad sails with Tara and his crew to the Island of Minos and they meet a village of descents of Minos. They learn that the treasure is guarded by the Minotaur in a labyrinth and Sinbad gets rid of the beast. When they are celebrating, Al-Jibar arrives in the village with the flesh eater Seif (Jared Robinson) and his army, and demands the scroll for him. Out of the blue, the villagers turn into beasts and attack the outsiders. Who will survive?

"Sinbad and the Minotaur" is a lame movie with a good story and awful acting and costumes. The non-charismatic Manu Bennett looks like Rambo or a marine with his hair cut and his acting is limited to grimaces. Lily Brown is histrionic in the role of the priestess Arianna. The villains Al-Jibar and Seif are sinister and Holly Brisley is very sexy. Despite the low-budget, the acting and costumes could be better. My vote is four.

Title (Brazil): "Sinbad e o Minotauro" ("Sinbad and the Minotaur")

The movie is no "Lord of the Rings," of course, but given the constraints of budget and more limited application of SFX, it is fairly acceptable, quite watchable, and better than the majority of recent low-budget productions that one can see on the SyFy channel these days. There is humor and deliberate irony of classic myth, as well as self-conscious parody at times, which, I believe, goes quite well to disperse any attempts to take things all too seriously. The acting is also acceptable - this particular representation of Sinbad, for example, just like Beowulf, is supposed to be a blend between the arrogance, yet zesty adventure-loving nature of an Indiana Jones and the ridiculous ego-mania of a Narcissus - and the lead delivers both reasonably well. Do not expect a great adventure tale; yet, the movie is fair and definitely watchable...

If they spent more than $100 making this they were robbed. The script is awful, the acting abysmal and the sets hilarious. My advice, don't waste valuable time watching this tripe. I cant honestly think of anything that was worth while watching. It is supposed to be based on the myth of the Minotaur, but the lead actor is so bad at acting. I have to mention the Kiwi accent of the male star that it's hard to take anything seriously right from the start. I'm surprised that SyFy channel even bothered to air this. Even the props were funny, but most of all was the plot. I've never sat through so much trash in all my life.

I watched Sinbad and the Minotaur with nothing else better to do, but while I was dubious of whether it would work it turned out to be worse than I expected. Production values-wise, it's a cheap-looking film, with costumes reminiscent of bad fancy dress, scenery that is not authentic at all and camera work that looks flat and rushed. I have seen worse effects in my lifetime, but although I do realise it was low-budget Sinbad and the Minotaur doesn't in my view look as though a lot of effort went into it. The minotaur has some menace but is too much of a giant bull rather than half-man/half-bull from mythology. The dialogue is terribly cheesy, but hilariously so at the same time, and while the idea was good the story was dull with no genuine thrills, imagination, fun and suspense and everything screams of being done before in adventure/fantasy films and better. The direction is sloppy, and the acting is pretty atrocious, with Manu Bennett having none of the charisma needed for the role of Sinbad. In fairness though, the characters are not interesting at all and have no life to them, the villain is especially flat. In conclusion, an awful film but if you watch it for novelty value you might get some enjoyment out of it. 1/10 Bethany Cox

There used to be A-Movies and B-Movies. This is a Z-Movie. After watching the first half, I decided to bail. Because I needed to brush my teeth and that was much more interesting than any masochistic urge to continue hurting my eyes with this tripe.

In all seriousness, this was made in my home town, and I would dearly love to offer some support to our ailing industry. But to be brutally honest - after the embarrassing travesty of another recent Australian film - "Tomorrow, When the War Began" - I thought things couldn't get worse. Well they have. Much worse in fact. I don't know where to begin in trying to offer a sensible review: perhaps suffice to say try and think of the worst movie you have seen in your life. Well this is a new candidate for that title. I truly can't think of a single positive aspect to this movie. It's about Sinbad???

Maybe...just maybe, your 4 year old might like this on DVD.

So unless you work for the studio and are forced to watch this, please save your time and money and do something more productive with your time.

1/10