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18 out of 20 people found the following comment useful :-
Homer blinded himself to avoid seeing this., 13 April 2008
1/10
Author: steven-222 from Berkeley, CA, USA

I didn't think SciFi Channel could broadcast a worse myth-&-monster movie than MINOTAUR. I was wrong.

It's okay to make a movie on the cheap; not everyone has access to a big budget, and amazing things can be done with a little imagination and talent. But there's very little of those commodities here. Acting is at a high school level. Direction is worse. Dialogue is trite. Scenes lurch from one dull monster attack to another, with occasional babe (er, goddess) interludes to break the monotony. The goddesses look and sound as it they're reading cue cards at a second-rate beauty contest.

Why must the makers of such movies mess with Greek myth, about which they clearly know (and care) nothing? Here, Homer the tale-teller appears as part of Odysseus's crew. That's an okay idea. Except this Homer (played by the worst actor of the lot, which is saying something) scribbles notes (with a feather quill!) and fawns over the heroes like an embedded reporter in Iraq. Legend tells us that Homer was blind, and recited his stories from memory. There is great power in that idea, a hearkening back to a prehistoric, preliterate age of traveling bards and oral tradition.

A magical movie could be made about Odysseus, and Homer, but this is not it.

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9 out of 10 people found the following comment useful :-
A funny thing happened on the way to Ithaca..., 26 April 2008
5/10
Author: ccmiller1492 (ccmiller1492@yahoo.com) from Fairfax, VA

A funny thing happened on the way to Ithaca...Odysseus went off course and inadvertently discovered the origin of vampires. Not as bad as it sounds, the story is grounded in Greek myth but reconstitutes Persephone as an evil lamia with vampiric children from Hades who lures the wily Greek and his crew for aid in her plot to conquer mortals. The concept is a good one, however poorly written and executed. Despite a lagging pace and the irritating presence of a post-adolescent poet Homer, the film looks good with imposing Arnold Vosloo and the rest of the crew looking pretty much like Homeric heroes, rather than the scroungy leather trouser-wearing biker rejects that seem to be so lamentably much in vogue in BC epics these days. Unfortunately, the two best actors of the crew get killed off, one rather too soon. Mercifully, viewers are also spared the annoying, wailing nonsensical Celtic and/or Moroccan women posing as soundtracks and incidental music score which is also far too prevalent in productions of this kind. However, in the interior cave sequence I did detect very subtly a chorus in the background singing "Agnus dei", a total non sequitur. With a better script, a better use of the actors on hand, and a brisker pace this would have been a winner. It's always a pleasure to see Mr. Vosloo, and he can't be faulted in his rendering of Odysseus.

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4 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
Good or Bad, 14 April 2008
4/10
Author: elliott78212 from United States

It's neither good nor bad, amateurish acting, poor direction with compentent special f/x,weak script/dialogue. Many movies lately just can't seem to get the language of a time period right without adding ridiculous modern dialogue clichés, slangs and what not. I kept waiting for one of them to pull out a cellphone because most the performances were phoned in, for me the beginning was the worse stupid twinkling lights in the background of scenes of them on the ship while long shots with harpies flying over head were of a cloudy twilight sky, so where did the twinkling stars come from....this is just pointing out one of many flaws and of course this ship was filmed in a studio with no water at all, I'm sure of it. If you're a fan of sword and sandal sci-fi adventure with sorcery and magic it only barely acts as an apetizer, a lightly flavored one at that, leaving you wanting terribly that you had The Odyssey starring Armande Assante in your DVD collection because watching all the hours of a rerun would be more satisfying than watching 90 minutes once you remove commercials of this drivel. I had tivo'd and fortunately was able to fastforward some simply painful dialogue moments in order to watch the special f/x. One thing to keep in mind few things shown as Sci-Fi Channel orginals they are really just productions from foreign markets like Canada, BBC, Germany or worse some reckless direct to video producer. Voslo does what he can but with this material its a wasted effort.

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4 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
Good or Bad, 14 April 2008
4/10
Author: elliott78212 from United States

It's neither good nor bad, amateurish acting, poor direction with compentent special f/x,weak script/dialogue. Many movies lately just can't seem to get the language of a time period right without adding ridiculous modern dialogue clichés, slangs and what not. I kept waiting for one of them to pull out a cellphone because most the performances were phoned in, for me the beginning was the worse stupid twinkling lights in the background of scenes of them on the ship while long shots with harpies flying over head were of a cloudy twilight sky, so where did the twinkling stars come from....this is just pointing out one of many flaws and of course this ship was filmed in a studio with no water at all, I'm sure of it. If you're a fan of sword and sandal sci-fi adventure with sorcery and magic it only barely acts as an apetizer, a lightly flavored one at that, leaving you wanting terribly that you had The Odyssey starring Armande Assante in your DVD collection because watching all the hours of a rerun would be more satisfying than watching 90 minutes once you remove commercials of this drivel. I had tivo'd and fortunately was able to fastforward some simply painful dialogue moments in order to watch the special f/x. One thing to keep in mind few things shown as Sci-Fi Channel orginals they are really just productions from foreign markets like Canada, BBC, Germany or worse some reckless direct to video producer. Voslo does what he can but with this material its a wasted effort.

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2 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
Enjoyable Sunday afternoon movie for mythology buffs, 27 December 2008
6/10
Author: shiningmonk from United Kingdom

I stumbled upon this fantasy film by accident and didn't really expect much from it, even though it stars the Mummy legend, Arnold Vosloo, who made an excellent Darkman 2. I was pleasantly surprised.

The premise, about Greek hero Odysseus encountering vampires on a lost island, sounds absurd. The special effects budget was clearly small and there are some scenes when you have to imagine what the heroes are fighting since the camera doesn't show it. However, the whole thing is saved by two factors. Firstly, the writers knew what they were doing. They were obviously familiar with Homer's classic epic, with the protagonist's strengths and weaknesses, and with how people talked and behaved in those mythological times. This helps makes the whole thing plausible. They also didn't waste time on unnecessary plot detours. Further, the story is actually well-crafted and every scene is actually relevant.

Secondly, the cast perform very well. Vosloo, as ever, is charismatic, and delivers his dialogue excellently. Randal Edwards makes a believable Homer and JR Bourne is a courageous Perimedes. All this without any irritating side kicks or distracting contemporary styles of speech.

If you're expecting a modern-day horror film, you'll be disappointed. But if you watch this with some cynicism, if you're familiar with Homer's Odyssey and enjoy a different slant on the vampire myth, this is a perfect Saturday afternoon movie, which may leave you with some interesting thoughts.

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Kills some time, nothing more, 7 January 2009
4/10
Author: Vincent from Ireland

A decent enough film, certainly not good but not really bad.

The acting is patchy. Vosloo is quite good as Obysseus, Bourne and Antonakos are OK in their roles but Edwards is terrible as Homer, not so much his performance as the fact that while the other characters are talking in a old style Homer speaks like a modern person and this jars every time he talks and finally Gibson is awful, completely wooden, but thankfully she isn't in it long.

The story is simple with good guys and bad guys and we are in no real doubt about which is which. It is an old fashioned fantasy film with OK effects although the action sequences are a bit poor.

Its a cheap film with a simple script and a decent pace.

The mixture of modern and old speech patterns is annoying and the cheesy extra bit at the end is also annoying but it'll kill a bit of time painlessly.

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1 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
How Bad Was It?, 16 August 2009
Author: S. J. Lewis (i0_9@hotmail.com) from SE PA

I've come not to expect much from any SyFy "original" movie. This particular one, though, plumbs new depths of bad writing, atrocious plotting, mediocre-to-bad acting and weak execution. It hijacked names from Greek mythology and applied them to the movie's two-dimensional characters in an attempt, I suppose, to give them some apparent depth, and then to compound the theft shamelessly grabbed some material from Christianity and Bram Stoker, and THEN, not content with making a complete mess of things, swiped an ending right out of any one of the "Halloween" movies. It was flat, predictable and never more than minimally interesting.

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0 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
Entertainment Value and not much else, 16 August 2009
4/10
Author: webmouse from United States

I really wanted to like this film. I truly did. The cast seemed excellent (although the inclusion of "Homer" should have told me all I needed to know about the script). Sadly, the best looking men on screen could not save this one.

The language is always a problem, and I realize that it is hard to decide between going for pure period speech or making it all modern. I prefer the former with some latitude for comprehensibility, but too many writers today don't even realize how people spoke in times past, so the occasional slip into a modern cliché is just glaring.

So as long as you don't pay any money for it and put your brain in neutral you'll get through it fine. Chant the mantra: entertainment value.

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