Highly Overrated But Still Good

Fantastic!

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

Ancient Egyptian mythology, archaeologists, Iraq War Veterans, various weapons, and dune buggies. Sounds like a recipe for a cool Indiana Jones movie, right? Negative. 15 minutes in, I was wondering how I was going to make it through the rest of this movie. First off, the monster was ridiculous, but not even in a campy, funny way. The script was unnatural, cliché, and generally awful. The story/plot, or what tried to pass for one, was terrible, with no real set up for the puzzle that ultimately needed to be solved to beat the monster. While this movie tried to be exciting by employing military weapons and characters, the stunts and fight scenes involving them were simple and fake-looking. Further, the movie tried to seem knowledgeable about the military by having Webster indignantly explain to Baccarin the difference between a "jarhead" and a "soldier," but in the same breath, the former logistics soldier referred to himself as a "grunt," which is not an Army-specific term, but instead refers to infantrymen, which he was not. The only bright spots in this film were the dune buggy stunts, the Ancient Egypt scene in the beginning, a small cameo by Richard Kind, and a funny- while-convincing performance by Charles Lister as weirdo Vet-turned-gun- runner Buford. You could watch this for free at IMDb through Hulu, but I think it's better suited for tying down your worst enemy Clockwork- Orange-style and making him/her watch it.

Three and a half stars! Unbelievable.I like and respect the cast, which is why I sat through it, but this is one of those films that should have been aborted at script level. Doesn't make any sense, excessively bloody (for no reason), very poor special effects, insulting mangulation of Egyptian religion and a monster that can't seem to decide if it's a mummy or a god and keeps repeating its one line (Uraghah) ad nausea-um.The last scene says it all, with Loony-Toons Ancient Egyptian soldiers pealing off ruin walls like paper cut-outs and, apparently, equally durable.The greatest bad movie sin: neither funny nor entertaining.If the scale extended to negative stars, I'd have given it -10 with lots of exclamation points.Clicked spoiler box to avoid being blacklisted and yes, mangulation is not a real word, yet.Update, 9-7-13.Just tripped over it again on SyFy and will revise my initial review: you should watch it at least once just to watch the cast doing a heroic job of trying to carry the show.Otherwise, it's worse than I remember. Absolutely nothing, from plot to dialog, makes any sense. Just one scene, George Kennedy standing on a sandy sand dune at a beach, using a walker, says it all. Except for the next scene, where a hole opens up beneath him and he winds up hanging upside down looking at a statue of Anubis wiggling its ears. In a 'chamber' with no visible source of light. A walker on an excessively sandy, like Sahara sandy, beach (and where's the ocean?) And watching Anubis wiggling it's ears in a totally darker than midnight room? No wonder Kennedy's character drops dead immediately thereafter (who do I have to F... to get out of this movie?) My first time around I must of been spending so much time trying to keep my jaw from dropping that I missed how the performances verge just on the edge of camp.Am example - the Primary (leader of the dig) is focusing on the day's finds (tight center frame) when she's attacked by that same Anubis, cutting to the silhouette of her tent as she's being strangled - an obvious reference to Boris Karloff's Mummy and reminiscent of a Betty Boop cartoon. (And how come monsters never seem to think of something else to do with sexy victims?)Oddly, I'm finding those performances engaging, no matter how bad the dialog. Like watching people talking gibberish (or French) totally seriously.

While the idea is more original than most Sci-Fi movies, the execution is, as usual lacking. While the practical mummy effects are not bad, and the "Gun Nut" character is over the top giggle inducing, the only real draw is to see Morena Baccarin and Adam Baldwin reunited on the small screen. I suspect that was the idea all along. They do the best they can with what they have but the "must see" moments for me were in the first 40 minutes or so when Morena's character sported some Tomb Raider style shorts. Not high brow cinema I know but you can't deny true beauty when you see it!!! And Adam Baldwin once again hams it up as the guy you love to hate. If you just want to watch a couple of your favorite Firefly characters have a good time with some sub par material then this might be for you. If you want good acting and character development then be advised to look elsewhere.

Over the years I've seen some pretty decent story ideas that the SciFi Channel has used as a basis for original films. They've usually gone to the bad because the money and/or skill needed to make them A quality entertainment just wasn't there.THE SANDS OF OBLIVION gives them the chance to mess up not a good idea but a potentially awesome one that could have been as exciting as THE MUMMY or RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. Unfortunately, the great idea just fizzles out.The basis of the story is that when Cecil B. DeMille made the original, silent THE TEN COMMANDMENTS the studio bulldozed the elaborate sets in the California desert instead of recycling the lumber and other building materials. It seems that there had been genuine Egyptian artifacts used in the set and something Very Bad had been unleashed.In the present day people are digging up the old desert location, and Something Bad is once again free to roam the Earth.The cast is adequate to the job, and the special effects are really pretty decent. But the script and direction are uneven, and the film never finds a consistent tone. It veers into comedy and seems to disregard the numerous people killed by the newly unleashed monster. Near the end there's a dune buggy race that's professionally filmed but seems to have been cut in from another movie.The original TEN COMMANDMENTS had a segment set in contemporary times (the 1920's) concerning the building of a cathedral with substandard material and the tragedy of putting cost and convenience in too high a position. A similar theme could have been developed with the lumber, which would be very well preserved in a desert climate.THE SANDS OF OBLIVION is certainly worth watching, but the main thing I kept thinking was what might have been.