SAHARA
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2005 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): * 1/2
Is SAHARA, which plays like a really bad parody of an Indiana Jones movie, cheesy fun or just cheesy? Just cheesy.
A badly miscast Matthew McConaughey, yucks it up as Dirk Pitt, an action hero made famous in a long series of Clive Cussler's novels, of which my son is a big fan. McConaughey's Dirk is a broadly comedic Indiana Jones wannabe with James Bond skills but none of either character's charms.
Penélope Cruz, who manages to lose most of her good looks, which is her chief attribute as an actress, plays the movie's token female, Eva Rojas. Eva is a World Health doctor tracking down a deadly virus, while Dirk and Al Giordino, Dirk's comedic sidekick, are trying to locate an 1865 Confederate ironclad ship lost in the middle of the Sahara desert -- don't ask. Always reliable Steve Zahn plays Al, but poor Zahn is stuck with lots of odoriferous dialog, including, "I'll find the bomb. You get the girl," and "I'm so tired of being shot at!"
In order to divert our attention from the sheer awfulness of the picture, the rock sound track, with off the wall tunes like "Sweet Home Alabama," is cranked up to nearly ear puncturing level. Bring earplugs.
SAHARA runs way too long at 2:07. It is rated PG-13 for "action violence" and would be acceptable for kids around 9 and up.
The film opens nationwide in the United States on Friday, April 8, 2005. In the Silicon Valley, it will be showing at the AMC theaters, the Century theaters and the Camera Cinemas.
Web: http://www.InternetReviews.com
Email: Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com
Want free reviews and weekly movie and video recommendations via Email?
Just send me a letter with the word "subscribe" in the subject line.
========== X-RAMR-ID: 39705 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 1376487 X-RT-TitleID: 1144274 X-RT-SourceID: 703 X-RT-AuthorID: 1271 X-RT-RatingText: 1.5/4
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews