Telegraph Online
July 25, 2003
By Tim Robey

Brad Pitt, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Michelle Pfeiffer, Joseph Fiennes - four faces far too pretty to be doing cartoon voice work. They huff, and puff, but can't bring much to this unobjectionable old-school escapade, in which Sinbad (Pitt) gets tricked by goddess of chaos Eris (a vampish Pfeiffer) into putting the life of his royal chum Proteus (Fiennes) on the line.

Zeta-Jones, in fairness, comes up trumps with some feisty ripostes as the lovelorn heroine Marina, but this is basically blandsville, and exactly the kind of formulaic quest adventure that the recent likes of Shrek and The Emperor's New Groove parodied so smartly. Screenwriter John Logan (Gladiator) eschews the usual details of Sinbad mythology in favour of Greek-tweaked variants, but the one exciting bit is a roc attack that's right out of Ray Harryhausen.