Is “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time” the best video game adaptation ever?  Personally, I prefer Uwe Boll’s “House of the Dead.”  At least the latter had the decency not to spend $200 million as if it were a legitimate movie.

This Jerry Bruckheimer-produced monstrosity is exactly like every other Jerry Bruckheimer-produced monstrosity.  The question isn’t whether or not it’s any good.  That should be obvious.  The real question is whether or not Bruckheimer actually knows the movies he makes are terrible.  I’m willing to bet he doesn’t care either way, because well, that’s not really the point.

What is the point?  Aside from box office spoils grand enough to make a Persian conqueror blush?  Beats me.

Prince Dastan (Jake Gyllenhaal) a former orphan boy adopted by the king on a whim for his remarkably selfless qualities and unflinching courage is dubbed the Lion of Persia after almost single-handedly conquering the kingdom of Alamut.  His jealous step brother, with designs to take over the thrown from their father, frames Dastan for the king’s murder sending our hero into exile with the beautiful, headstrong princess of Alamut, Tamina (Gemma Arterton).  Bad situation, right?  Luckily the movie is based on a video game so nothing is really ever at stake.  The princess just happens to have the Dagger of Time, a cheap-looking knife with magical sand in its glass hilt with the power to send those who wield it back in time.  How convenient.  You know what happens next.

“Prince of Persia” is a strange breed of sixth century quasi-Persian motifs, augmented to make things more hip, and awkward video game physics that don’t quite translate into a live action setting.  Suspension of disbelief is always required for Hollywood blockbusters.  That’s part of what makes going to the movies so much fun.  I don’t need or even want everything to be firmly rooted in hard science.  But “Prince of Persia” makes no effort at all to ground the film in any believable universe.  Does it really improve your film to show our hero effortlessly scaling the towering outer walls of a massive fortress using the futuristic metallic arrows plunged into the rock at exactly the right angle from impossibly skilled marksmen a quarter of a mile away?

Even to accept the video game physics and ridiculous premise would not be enough to save this embarrassingly bad pseudo-period non-epic.  The sorry acting is made worse by the baffling decision to give our Persians proper English accents.  I suppose it doesn’t help any that the cast is composed almost entirely of beautiful white American and British actors with sparkling white teeth and slender European bone structures.  But what may be most troubling about the production is the unbelievably poor props and effects.  With $200 million you’d think getting a giant wooden pulley wheel to actually look like wood would be the least of your worries.  No such luck.  The props look like foam fakes and the CGI effects inserted onto the green screens behind our actors look like pre-generated templates that came packaged with the editing suite.

The one last potential savior of this ill-conceived, wholly unnecessary B-movie dressed up as a Hollywood blockbuster is the chemistry between our leads, Gyllenhaal and Arterton.  Unfortunately there’s scarcely anything to say about it because there is none.

“Prince of Persia” is the type of movie that should have been made for $5 million, if even green-lit at all, and found its audience through Sunday evening rentals in the Redbox machine because it was either that or “Dear John” and your girlfriend picked last time.