Arabian Nights (2000)

Such a frustrating disappointment

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

The movie is called Arabian Nights, however the original name for the story was "Stories of 1001 Nights". And the whole story happens in Persia( Shahrzad was the name of the queen) and the story was originally written in Arabic( official language of Iran in that era).The story was supposed to be before Islam otherwise a lot of things would be different; But a lot of Islamic symbols are used in the movie. Alladin is an Arabic name and was not Chinese(as shown) same for Pricess Zubaida (again Arabic name) and not Chinese. The Story of Alibaba goes on in Baghdad and not Damascus. Harun-Al-Rashid was in Iran( Khorasan) and definitely after Islam. I know he was not in the story.

This movie with its many popular tales told throughout was incredible. Don't let the length put you off as it almost did me. In the end I felt it could have been longer it was that enjoyable. The popular tales of Ali Baba and Aladdin, along with a few other I didn't recognize were fantastic. Each story was able to flow into the next using characters from the previous story, until the last 2 tales after Aladdin.(The only small miscast was that of Aladdin, Lee, while his acting was believable, did not seem to strike me as an Aladdin.)Each tale has a point, coming together in the end.Spellbinding entertainment.

i bought this movie on dvd in a discount shelf, and it was worth every cent. i see ppl keep complaining about the story of aladdin, which _is_ originally a chinese story. and the book, is just a collection of fairytales from around the world, not only persian ones.

This is (once again) a loose version on the Nights theme, and is not the story collection known by most fans of the works. There are so many departures from the original that it would be ridiculous to list them all; however the dropping of the character of Dunyazad, Shahrazad's little sister to whom she actually tells the stories, is not only a great shame but it has created a problem, because it has left Shahrazad telling the stories directly to the King; thus making the film script less credible than the original. Shahrazad is depicted as being the first potential victim of the Sultan's wrath, rather than the one to break the mold of his killing spree; thus making Shahriar seem more of a nice guy than he actually was. A handy way of removing the most distinctive characteristic of one of the cruellest kings in literature also partially removes Shaharazad's underlying motive for telling the stories in the first place, because in the original Shahriar's track record has been proven and the city has been nearly decimated of available young ladies. However, the chosen script has been acted well and looks visually stunning, helped by magnificent Turkish and Moroccan backdrops. In the first part of the film Shahrazad tells the tales of "Ali Baba", "The Hunchback" and "Aladdin". Only the first half of the tale of "The Hunchback" is told, which is a shame because it has been done well; and I was looking forward to "The Story of the Tailor". Curiously the character of ‘the Christian' was replaced with a totally out of place Englishman (who just happened to be wandering through Basrah in the 11th century). In this movie Aladdin's cave is filled with terracotta warriors rather than treasure! These warriors are guarding the lamp, which is therefore quite easy for Aladdin to find because its position behind the statues is obvious. The second part of the film concludes the story of "Aladdin" (rather slowly) and tells the tales of "The Sleeper Awakened" and "Prince Ahmed and the Fairy Peri Banou". "The Sleeper Awakened" is in fact a telling of a part of the original, this version ending with the Polonius-like death of the eves-dropping Haroun Al-Raschid. Also in this part an invented dispute between Shahriar and his brother Shahzaman becomes more and more intrusive. NB. Shahriar was a Persian king; not an Arabic sultan - and his capital may have been Ctesiphon. It certainly was not Baghdad, which was not built until 762 AD, 121 years after the end of the Sassanid dynasty. Whilst this is enough of an inaccuracy, the original story actually implies that he ruled the eastern half of the Sassanian empire and Shahzaman the western half, so his capital may well have been much farther east - after all we are told in the prologue that Shahriar "lived and ruled in India and Indochina".