For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

A Major Disappointment

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

You can see elements of great adventure films in this with one sequence where Sinbad tries to evade guards as he searches for the girl within the palace seeming rather like the later adventure in the first Star Wars film of 1977 with Han Solo trying to evade stormtroopers while searching for the girl within the Death Star. George Lucas openly was inspired by all the adventures he saw as a kid and whether this sequence was directly influential or whether it was just an example of the type of scenes which inspired him I do not know. Scenes like that are classic adventure fun but they are few and far between in this rahter dull and confused film. There are plenty of better adventure films from this era and there are better Sinbad films too. The film is not artistically interesting and the story is pretty turgid. Maureen O'Hara is, as always, a sparkling presence, Anthony Quinn is always a good character actor and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. is well able to handle the action and humour but there is little material to work with here. I am being generous to award it 4.5/10 for the good elements within this very average film.

The trailer calls Sinbad "gay" and they are dead on.It's very hard to believe that he's interested in the extremely hot Maureen O'Hara. It also calls Maureen "the loveliest prize in Arab". I have no clue where Arab is but she sure is lovely. I assume this is the first Sinbad movie and although there are no Ray Harryhausen monsters,it's still a good movie. Sometimes they ramble and I found myself not paying attention but there's plenty of action to make up for that. As usual,Sinbad assembles a crew(not shown) but this time he has a Chinese barber that he doesn't trust. Why do they need a barber?Why let him shave you if you don't trust him?. It's your typical Sinbad story...adventure,action and plenty of hot girls. This is a movie you should see.

*Spoiler/plot- Sinbad the Sailor, 1947. While on a Arab dock, Sinbad begins to tell one of his sagas to his fellow peasants. Agents of the city ruler hear his story of the lost treasure of Alexander the Great and decide to take the renowned treasure for himself. Sinbad gets involved with a woman who is the object of the city's top noble. They story follows them to find the treasure and the drama ensues.*Special Stars- Maureen O'Hara, Douglas Fairbanks Gr, Walter Slezak, Anthony Quinn, Alan Napier.*Theme- Adventure is always open to open minded people.*Trivia/location/goofs- 3 color Technicolor, RKO studios. Post WW2. Mostly sound stage sets and miniatures to tell this story. The Middle Eastern sets are luxurious and colorful along with the costumes and make-ups.*Emotion- A thoroughly sumptuous, rich, and opulent film production from a smaller RKO studios. The dialog is romantic, colorful, poetic and rhythmic as from the Arabian Nights stories. Mr. Fairbanks Jr does an incredible job in his characterization of Sinbad with his leaps and jumps all through the sets and enemy soldiers. (His father did a silent version decades before.) The plot is well paced with positive audience themes and there is enough memorable scenes (the treasure room, Greek fire, and fight in the harem) to leave the audience with memories galore. This film is a fantasy mix of morals and action.*Based on- The books of the 'Arabian Nights'.

"Sindbad the Sailor" is a lovely film to look at and it's obvious that RKO really pulled out all the stops to get this made. While this was a lesser studio in Hollywood, here they use nice garish 1940s Technicolor (the type classic movie fans love--despite its being very unrealistic), lavish sets and tons of costumes. It was obviously a prestige picture--and one on which the studio lavished a lot of attention. Because of this, it's odd that the dialog totally stank. All too often, people talked like they were either making speeches or doing an antiquated play--and in the process, the whole thing came off as stilted and silly. It's a shame, really, as I wanted to like this film a lot, but with B-movie writing, it only was mediocre.In the lead was Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. and I assume he was chosen because of his father. Fairbanks, Sr. made a huge mark in the 1920s starring in fabulous action-adventure films like "The Thief of Bagdad" and "The Mark of Zorro" (among many others). His athleticism and wonderful screen presence must have played a huge part in their selecting his son for this 1947 film--especially since Fairbanks, Jr. was a very good actor but really was NOT known for this sort of film. However, despite being far less athletic than Dad, he was quite handsome and very good here...but his dialog....yecch! Overall, the film is an enjoyable escapist film with dialog that will make decent writers cry. The film has action, lovely sets, Maureen O'Hara (playing her rather clichéd petulant woman once again) and is pure escapism. But it plays like a B-movie with a great budget.