Riddles of the Sphinx (2008)

Sadly Over-hyped

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

This was in a large batch of DVDs I bought on eBay at a bargain-basement price. Its title was "Curse of the Pharaoh", but under whatever name it might be released, it will always be a real STINKER. Low budget, yes. Lousy acting, yes. Flimsy story, yes. Surprisingly, however, it was not, unlike other stinky-pooh movies, shot is almost total darkness, so kudos to the producers on this point, for sure! I suppose that for someone who is an over-the-top obsessive, crazed lover of anything Egyptian and curse-like, this flick may have some appeal, but anyone who is in the slightest way discerning, will be turned off within the first few minutes, by the appearance of a poor CG effort at a scary monster (a kind of pudgy, flying bear), and the silly pretty, smirking gal with twin big automatic pistols, banging away at it, while another character waves his arms frantically, runs around and yells appropriately. Oh dear, dear me. Laughable, really. What a start! Not really a contender as a film for grown-ups, but a fairly good lesson in how NOT to make a movie. I give it a 2 because it is not shot in darkness, is in focus, and the music is not intrusive.

An Egypt-themed B-movie from the Sci Fi Channel. I'm not sure that many people will be wowed by this set-up or idea and indeed the execution turns out to be just a poor as in many a film made by the channel. The storyline sees a couple of heroic characters teaming up to battle an ancient curse whereby a Sphinx is wreaking havoc in the modern world and killing all who stand before it.Despite the Egypt theme and setting, this cheapo movie was made in Canada and boy does it show. None of the sets are remotely convincing, the CGI effects are awful, and nowhere is there an air of authenticity. Instead, the film happily copies and combines the characters from the INDIANA JONES and TOMB RAIDER franchises, to ill effect. Dina Meyer (STARSHIP TROOPERS) is the ageing female lead, saddled with an awful hairstyle and trying desperately to be Angelina Jolie (hint: she isn't). Lochlyn Munro is the chubby, goofy Indiana Jones wannabe (he even dresses the same) and frankly he's an embarrassment. RIDDLES OF THE SPHINX is thus barely watchable.

Watching Riddles of the Sphinx with little else to do, I was anticipating little and got almost nothing to write home about. Dino Meyer is a sexy and decently charismatic lead. However when it comes to redeeming qualities that's where Riddles of the Sphinx ends. The sets look minimal and nothing to done to make them interesting, and the costumes were reminiscent of the actors having had a fantasy-adventure movie fancy-dress party(or even about to have one). The editing is choppy and the effects particularly with the monster of the title are hopelessly cheap in quality. The script is aimless and filled with unfunny lines that were no doubt meant to be witty, and the story is structurally thin, unoriginal(if it was trying to pay homage to Indiana Jones it took the homage to extreme levels that it feels like a rip-off instead) and has no excitement whatsoever. The characters are badly-written clichés(SyFy clichés in alternative to genre clichés) with none of them likable or developed enough. I was especially irritated by the girl who seems to be cleverest of the bunch, I've seen that plot-device before and something about it always annoys me. The rest of the acting apart from Meyer suffers from the writing and characters, Lochlyn Munro is an especially unconvincing hero. Overall, with the exception of Meyer Riddles of the Sphinx just didn't engage. 2/10 Bethany Cox

No surprise - about what you would expect from a third rate network. The budget was probably whatever the limit on the producer's credit card was. All of the typical clichés for a poorly written / directed / acted project that looks like it was done by a bunch of film students over a weekend in Vancouver. (Yeah, we noticed that Egypt, Greece, and Iraq all look a lot like British Columbia in the fall, cough, cough)The only real surprise is that someone with the talent of Dina Meyer would agree to participate in this kind of garbage. Yeah she looked great, but come on, put any physically fit 40 year old actress in an outfit inspired by Laura Croft and they will too. Need the work that badly eh - what a shame.A big waste of time and pretty sad considering how many other potentially decent projects didn't get bankrolled so this waste of film could.