Aladdin and the Death Lamp (and Pegasus vs. Chimera)

Hey gang! What's worse than a Syfy Saturday night film? TWO Syfy Saturday night films. Yep we had the cinematic equivalent of the asteroid event that killed the dinosaurs and boy I didn't look so good either. The first thing I noticed is that both films had the exact same behind the scene people to blame for these messes. Both even had the same three writers which probably cost less than the same talent a room full of monkeys would have brought to the scene.

Ok, So Aladdin was the better of the two. Aladdin and his buddies and his girl pal find a map to a treasure. An evil merchant/thief with several teeth MIA and his gang follow around to cause trouble. The treasure turns out to be a lamp, inside the lamp a djinn who is rather put out since he's been stuck in that lamp for years. Soooo, no one believes that the djinn will pervert wishes just so it can kill people and suck their souls out so the djinn of course perverts wishes and kills people and sucks their souls out. Also, since the writers three are absolutely sure we haven't seen "Wishmaster" there's the big subplot about the djinn wanting to free his fellow djinns so they can rain some good old fashion brimstone on the world.

Ok, writing is piss poor, or as they say in Britain "American Beer." The only interesting thing about the writing is the great pains they took to avoid as much Islam and Arabic culture as possible. Aladdin might as well been from Ohio. The acting is mostly bland though old toothless gives it a good go. The specia effects for the djinn specially for its smokey backwash is pretty good. All else is craptastic. If I had to pick the two worst the first would be a CGI snake that was so bad you could almost see through it. The Other was some poor soul being covered in liquid gold. Now when "Game of Thrones" did that it was cool, but then it looked like real molten gold not Nickolodien slime mixed with gold glitter.

I can't even go into the next feature without howling like a banshee at a baptism. Let's just say this; what comes to your mind when you think of "Pegasus." Does not a certain bit of wingage pop to mind? Soooo, when you first see Pegasus we see a horse. Of course, it's so obvious. Who needs wings.

*grumble grumble*