Riddles of the Sphinx (2008)

Excellent, smart action film.

I saw this movie before reading any reviews, and I thought it was very funny. I was very surprised to see the overwhelmingly negative reviews this film received from critics.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

I couldn't take this movie seriously from very early on in the movie. The CGI department, or whomever was giving them instructions, obviously didn't know what a sphinx looks like and decided to go with a strange looking griffin instead. Even I could tell the difference between the two creatures while I was still in grade school.The acting was fairly poor. The make-up department should never be hired by anyone ever again. The bald guy looks like his head was shaved the day they stared filming and make-up never even tried to blend the skin tone.The script was pathetic. I've seen some bad stuff on SciFi and this is one of the worst. The male lead just comes off as corny while the female lead is normally a much better actress. The little girl suffers from the Wesley Crusher syndrome. People don't like this so why do they keep using it as a plot device I will never understand.

The delectable Dina Meyer and the normally competent Lochlyn Munro co-star in this turkey made for The Sci-Fi Channel, about archaeologists unleashing an unkillable monster from an Egyptian tomb. Meyer looks great in black leather and shooting two guns at a time a la Tomb Raider Lara Croft while Munro simply looks like an idiot in an Indiana Jones hat about two sizes too big for his head. The movie goes nowhere once the monster is unleashed, which happens about five minutes in. At times, the creature looks like a poor man's griffin; at other times, it morphs into a bad copy of Inhotep from the first two THE MUMMY movies. The dialog is from hunger, as is the acting. Other than tuning in to get a look at the beautiful Meyer, this one is best skipped.

Factual concerns have little to do with this melodramatic fantasy. Forget the notion that you will learn anything about the Great Sphinx of Giza, mythology, or, for that matter, cogent story design in the art of cinema.But you may enjoy seeing a strong cast working on green screen sets, trusting that the budget will be there to put them in a realistic and menacing setting. That trust was seriously misplaced.I give it six stars because it crosses into the dreaded -- or prized -- "Plan 9" territory. Some will say this movie is a mess and a disaster. Others will say it's so bad it's actually fun to watch.Filmmakers in this genre walk a fine line when they try to depict a fantastic scenario without losing the audience's suspension of disbelief. Here, the disbelief is unsuspended fairly early in Act One when the protagonist blows up his own house in order to kill a deadly mythical creature pursuing him. I was wishing I could be there when he gets around to explaining to the insurance adjusters what had happened.The hero, Robert, is a high school teacher and language expert who transforms into an Indiana Jones clone as he and his allies jet from one ancient history site to another in search of clues to -- what else? -- the key to save humanity from a Biblical plague. Wait. Make that a pre-Biblical plague.He does so with the help of Karen, his plucky teenage daughter, who has some kind of super-analytical skills that aren't really explained, and Jessica, a plucky operative of a super-secret paramilitary organization that labors outside of international law but somehow has the support of academics worldwide and seems to be intent on fighting the forces of evil. The fact that Jessica is a beautiful brunette who took her fashion sense from Catwoman gives this movie at least one leg up on similar Sci-Fi Channel fare.My ultimate wish was that this was made as a comedy. That certainly must have been the conclusion of the closed-caption editors, who obviously had great fun. Several times every scene, when the pulsating soundtrack was turned up to explain motivation, the CC line was "music" -- flashing every 10 seconds. When Robert used his mystical amulet to try to break through an ancient Plexiglas barrier to save Jessica, the caption was "Bash, bash..." Indeed, this could be taken as a comedy until the last scene, when the climax unfolds in context of Ultimate Sacrifice. Certainly not the stuff of comedy.This then, is the Riddle of the Riddles of the Sphinx. Is this a Disaster for the Ages or a misbegotten comedy of errant intent? You be the judge.

The Sci-Fi channel. Despite having some really good original TV series, I always think of the network first and foremost as the "Disaster/Monster B-movie network". Even its documentaries are blatantly science fiction. That may come as a shock to some people, but dude, you CAN'T find a crystal skull with a metal detector...I only watched this movie because I was bored and I have a more than passing fascination with archaeology. I don't normally watch Sci-Fi Saturday.Now, as a writer, I understand that ideas are a dime a dozen, but I also know that we've been out of ideas pretty much since we've had the ability to HAVE ideas. That said, I understand the similarities to The Librarian and Indiana Jones, but COME ON! Don't make the hero of this movie dress IDENTICALLY like Jones! That's just taking the similarity too far!I applaud the idea of a female hero, but don't make her so gung-ho about guns that she admits they're her "security blanket" and continues using them after realizing time and time again the hard way that the monster's completely bulletproof.I can also understand the need to draw in the young adult demographic, but having the tweenaged girl be a complete genius and outthink the adults in almost every scene smacks of badly written Mary Sue fanfiction, especially if the concerned father seriously makes such a stupid decision as to take the kid into the heart of the war in Iraq(wearing bright pink no less), let alone repeatedly exposing the kid to an invulnerable monster when there's a perfectly good hidden sanctuary where she'd be safe. There's a reason why we have satphones, people.As for the writing, the movie was so completely predictable, it's hard to come up with a suitable adjective to describe it.