I love this movie so much

Crappy film

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

I ended up watching this Canadian TV movie for the sole reason that I saw that Lochlyn Munro was the lead actor, while he is not really known, I saw him when he was young as part of the cast of the short lived Hawkeye TV series, and I was pinched by curiosity about what he was doing ten years after that. I had no expectations about the quality of the film, and it turned out to be as bad as I was expecting, despite this I kind of enjoyed it. The plot is so simple, a passage to another dimension is opened and this act sets free a sphinx which, being responsible of protecting the passage, goes on a rampage to kill those responsible. The sphinx is not the only things that gets free, there's also an ancient curse that will destroy the human race, our only hope is a group made by a high school history teacher (Munro), his teenage daughter, a femme fatale which is also his ex-girlfriend and the leader of a government branch dealing with the supernatural. To stop the sphinx they will have to solve a number of riddles and collect a series of mystical stones hidden around the world. I don't think no one watching this films thinks they are going to see something worth of remembering, but if someone does the very first scene, when the sphinx goes wild killing a number of people, should be enough to make clear the quality of the film. Bad acting and bad fx, the monster created with computer animation is terribly unrealistic and could be considered as a digital equivalent to the puppets seen in the worst sci-fi B movies. Sum to this that the two main characters are obvious copies of Indiana Jones and Lara Croft, that the script is totally predictable and with every possible common place included: a traitor in the group, a very smart girl, a reluctant hero. I could also talk about the unrealistic settings and the absurd presence in every encounter with the monster of a couple of extras added to the group with the sole purpose of giving the sphinx someone to kill.But despite all the bad things told, I must say the film is bad, but not terrible, and it didn't bore me at any moment. If you know what you are up to then you can also have a good time watching it, and I guess that's what the creators of the film had in mind, it is a bad film, but it is entertaining. If you are in a good mood and with the correct company, then you can have fun checking the inconsistencies of the plot, or some laughable stuff like anti-gravity guns; the genius teenager, with the ability to calculate with mathematical precision the exact second in which a ricocheting bullet will stop; or the sphinx transformation into a human, a moment in which it is played by a wrestler that made me remember Tor Johnson, an actor appearing in Ed Wood films.To finish I must say that the way in which the monster is finally stopped does have a little bit of originality. To sum everything up this is a predictable adventure lacking in both economical and artistic resources, but if you don't take it seriously you may enjoy it. Watching a bad film from time to time is good, as I think it helps you put the good stuff in the right perspective. And if you are watching something bad, then its better if its something like this which despite its shortcomings is good fun.

Is there any way you could just FIRE your writers, directors and casting director? They need to be told they don't have any business being in this business. The actors didn't even seem convincing, so either this is because they are just that bad OR the director doesn't know how to help anything. The beast didn't look good in the least bit either. I really don't understand the continual monies filling the coffers to waste film on these "productions." There are better stories, better heroes and better music.Terrible drudge. Waste of time is what my 13 yr old boy commented to me about this "movie" I am using that term loosely here. Someone needs to seriously get someone new to head up the programming for SciFi, someone with the ability to tell someone no when they hear a bad idea. I've seen B-rated movies that are better than this, B-rated movies that SciFi channel PLAYS on it's channel. Why don't they take some pointers even from those movies and you know... strive for that?

Factual concerns have little to do with this melodramatic fantasy. Forget the notion that you will learn anything about the Great Sphinx of Giza, mythology, or, for that matter, cogent story design in the art of cinema.But you may enjoy seeing a strong cast working on green screen sets, trusting that the budget will be there to put them in a realistic and menacing setting. That trust was seriously misplaced.I give it six stars because it crosses into the dreaded -- or prized -- "Plan 9" territory. Some will say this movie is a mess and a disaster. Others will say it's so bad it's actually fun to watch.Filmmakers in this genre walk a fine line when they try to depict a fantastic scenario without losing the audience's suspension of disbelief. Here, the disbelief is unsuspended fairly early in Act One when the protagonist blows up his own house in order to kill a deadly mythical creature pursuing him. I was wishing I could be there when he gets around to explaining to the insurance adjusters what had happened.The hero, Robert, is a high school teacher and language expert who transforms into an Indiana Jones clone as he and his allies jet from one ancient history site to another in search of clues to -- what else? -- the key to save humanity from a Biblical plague. Wait. Make that a pre-Biblical plague.He does so with the help of Karen, his plucky teenage daughter, who has some kind of super-analytical skills that aren't really explained, and Jessica, a plucky operative of a super-secret paramilitary organization that labors outside of international law but somehow has the support of academics worldwide and seems to be intent on fighting the forces of evil. The fact that Jessica is a beautiful brunette who took her fashion sense from Catwoman gives this movie at least one leg up on similar Sci-Fi Channel fare.My ultimate wish was that this was made as a comedy. That certainly must have been the conclusion of the closed-caption editors, who obviously had great fun. Several times every scene, when the pulsating soundtrack was turned up to explain motivation, the CC line was "music" -- flashing every 10 seconds. When Robert used his mystical amulet to try to break through an ancient Plexiglas barrier to save Jessica, the caption was "Bash, bash..." Indeed, this could be taken as a comedy until the last scene, when the climax unfolds in context of Ultimate Sacrifice. Certainly not the stuff of comedy.This then, is the Riddle of the Riddles of the Sphinx. Is this a Disaster for the Ages or a misbegotten comedy of errant intent? You be the judge.

The Sci-Fi channel. Despite having some really good original TV series, I always think of the network first and foremost as the "Disaster/Monster B-movie network". Even its documentaries are blatantly science fiction. That may come as a shock to some people, but dude, you CAN'T find a crystal skull with a metal detector...I only watched this movie because I was bored and I have a more than passing fascination with archaeology. I don't normally watch Sci-Fi Saturday.Now, as a writer, I understand that ideas are a dime a dozen, but I also know that we've been out of ideas pretty much since we've had the ability to HAVE ideas. That said, I understand the similarities to The Librarian and Indiana Jones, but COME ON! Don't make the hero of this movie dress IDENTICALLY like Jones! That's just taking the similarity too far!I applaud the idea of a female hero, but don't make her so gung-ho about guns that she admits they're her "security blanket" and continues using them after realizing time and time again the hard way that the monster's completely bulletproof.I can also understand the need to draw in the young adult demographic, but having the tweenaged girl be a complete genius and outthink the adults in almost every scene smacks of badly written Mary Sue fanfiction, especially if the concerned father seriously makes such a stupid decision as to take the kid into the heart of the war in Iraq(wearing bright pink no less), let alone repeatedly exposing the kid to an invulnerable monster when there's a perfectly good hidden sanctuary where she'd be safe. There's a reason why we have satphones, people.As for the writing, the movie was so completely predictable, it's hard to come up with a suitable adjective to describe it.