That’s a round-about way of saying I watched Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time in the theater today.

Movies based on video games generally tend to miss expectations, but happily, I have never played the video game that this movie is based on. If you haven’t either, then here’s the gist: a magic dagger turns back time and uses some magic sand to fuel its time-circuits (okay, I was just kidding about the time-circuits). You can figure out the rest.

Here’s the important thing to note about movies that involve time-travel: no matter what happens, you can’t take it at face value because sooner or later some bloke will come along and undo all of it. And when the only thing stopping you is some lame threat involving sand-storms across the world, no one really gives a second thought to changing time as they please. Now if someone had said the entire space-time fabric would come unravelled causing the Universe to implode, that would have made them sit up and pay attention…

In case you were wondering, the hero’s uncle — the King’s brother — is the bad guy. And in case you don’t want to read the spoilers, skip the previous sentence. With that out of the way, here are the top four reasons why he’s the bad guy:

1. He is the prince’s uncle. Uncles seldom end up on the good side.
2. The prince claims that he is the only one he can trust. Er…yeah, right.
3. He has a pointy beard.
4. He has a name like “Nizam”.

Moving on, there’s the question of how long the movie really lasted, after all of the time-travel, I mean. Here’s what happens: the Persian army camps outside the city, attacks at dawn, after which the prince accuses the uncle of treachery. In a bizarre reaction, the uncle gives himself away by attacking the prince (why?) and gets himself killed in the resulting scuffle. The prince gets the girl. The end.

Finally, the action sequences seemed a little far-fetched, but entertaining. Now if you weren’t satisfied with this movie, there’s always the sequel. Any movie that has a colon in it and sounds like “X: blah blah” has a sequel coming in the near future.

Interestingly, the movie is completely in 3D, which means the audience needs to wear those special goggles that make things stand out (notice the pun?) The effects are pretty impressive, I must say.

Bolt rates high on the cute-o-meter, just as you would expect of a movie with a dog, a cat and a hamster in it. Add to that a little girl (voiced by Miley Cyrus) who loves her dog very much indeed, and you have the perfect recipe for a lovable Thursday-night-movie.

My opinion about the movie: definitely worth watching. The script and direction combine a passion for the game with light touches of comedy and drama to conjure up a couple of hours of sheer excitement. There are also elements pointing to the personal lives of some of the characters, adding a measure of reality to the story.

I had a dream last night. Perhaps it had something to do with my recent purchase of a laptop, because this was precisely what I was doing in my dream. Not an actual purchase, but I had a large box with the notebook in it, and I was lugging it around, presumably to get it home.

The twist was that in my forgetfulness, I kept leaving it behind at different locations — a classroom, on the road and so on — and each time, I walked back anxiously looking for it. When I left it behind somewhere on the road and then went back to hunt for it, it was returned to me by a passerby — but now the laptop was no longer packaged, and my name was printed (not written, printed) on it.

The good news is that I did get it “home” finally, although I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a house in real life.