First, some trailers for everday life. Guess where I got the link from? I’ll give you three tries. Damn. Yes, it was Czeltic Girl.

Second, let me just say that I like adventure. I know that Temple of Doom was the worst of the Indiana Jones movies; so horrible, in fact, as to make purchasing the 3-DVD pack a bit of a gamble. I still enjoy watching it.

In that light, Sinbad is quite good. It has an epic scale with characters that are straight out of legend: unstoppable swordfighters, a spidery lookout, a good and noble king, and a goddess who delights in chaos. Each adventure within the story seems like a mini-episode of a well-made animated television series. And although the film suffers from Disney and Katzenberger’s touch for putting “everything” in the story, the tale is exciting enough to warrant some distractions.

Not that there weren’t mistakes made. Comic relief was already well-handled by the script and the peripheral characters. Anthropomorphizing a dog smacked of Jar-Jar Binks. Thankfully, the dog had a small part and was nearly forgettable, if unforgivable. Also, the strong female is fast becoming (if not already) a stock character that this movie could have done without. Sinbad eventually discovers in himself that he is more than just a thief, but a hero (Spoiler!) but the dynamicism would have been more effective if the viewer didn’t get the feeling that he “did it for a girl.”

Much like “The Time Machine” (the book) makes a bolder statement (than the movie) if the main character created the machine for his passionate devotion to science and progress and not simply to save the life of one person, Sinbad’s self-awareness is less about a personal awakening and more about getting with the girl of his dreams. This use of thrown-in romance as motivation cheapens the character’s ideals in too many movies. I’m all for love, and I think it can be a determining factor in a dynamic character’s epiphany, but not EVERY character does what they do for love. Even heroes sometimes have other ideals in mind.

For animation, it gets high marks. As is common now, they blended computer animation with old standards, though not as seamlessly as they could have. Although I’ve never been entirely comfortable with the animation style of Dreamworks, I must admit that they created some incredible effects with the goddess of chaos. Despite her feminine features, she seemed entirely inhuman, a being who twists reality around her like we would gesture with our hands. Bravo to the animators on that team.

This is not a high-concept, challenging film; however, it is an entertaining one.