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BY PETER KEOUGH
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Not much of the original swashbuckling sailor from the Arabian Nights remains in this animated incarnation. He’s not even Arabian; rather he’s from Syracuse, a name Americans are more likely to link with this year’s NCAA basketball champs than with the Sicilian city state of antiquity. Brad Pitt voices a dudish version of the title hero, who as the story begins is pirating the priceless Book of Peace (the Roadmap having apparently proving unsatisfactory) from the ship of childhood friend Proteus (Ralph Fiennes voicing not the morphing god but the heir to the Syracuse throne, à la Prince of Egypt). Eris (Michelle Pfeiffer), goddess of mischief, intervenes and takes the Book for herself back to Tartarus (the land where your teeth go if you don’t floss). So Sinbad must undergo a Odysseus/Jason-and-the-Argonauts kind of quest (deadly rocks called the "Dragons’ Teeth" haunted by sirens, for example) to recover the Book, with the help of Proteus’s feisty fiancée, Marina (Catherine Zeta-Jones), her presence enabling him to prove that though he likes to hang out with the guys, Sinbad is still a real man. This formulaic pastiche directed by first-timer Patrick Gilmore and Antz helmer Tim Johnson packs few surprises, and the dreary dialogue and shtick offer rare laughs (my favorite lines: "How did he get carrots?" and "Put a shirt on before you poke someone’s eye out"). Sinbad and company pale in interest before the gorgeous background landscapes and such wonders as an island that becomes a waking leviathan. (86 minutes)
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