Very disappointing...

Simply A Masterpiece

One of my all time favorites.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

What I saw was a throwback to cliché-cluster flicks of decades ago, but the soundtrack puts it firmly in the eighties.It is thumpingly and enormously awful, as wretched and phony a film as could be conceived. Tittering harem ladies a'bathing, stern Turks delivering script bits from the 100 Most Popular Stock Lines for the genre. They might as well have gone beyond the scattered skin peeks to a fuller soft-core intention -- all pillow-plush and pleasures in the sultan's palace, because that's already the quality/ambiance/performance level of much of this thin 'n cheesy production.The producers may have scored the perfectly suited shooting location, but much else in the movie seems to be reaching for the furthest reaches of inauthenticity.Admissions: There is amusement, even delight, in encountering something so consummately lame, in wondering who could work on it and think for a moment this embarrassment should be taken seriously. I really did laugh out loud a few times at this painfully acted, double-dreadfully written, obliviously directed caricature. Maybe I WOULD view a portion of it again, preferably with someone else. "Look!...watch this! Watch!"And..I only made it through the early half. Turned away easily without even the tiniest rhinestone of regret. (A bug buzzing by in the living room could be diversion enough from this bungle.) Could be...could be that when it moved deeper into violence and intrigue, into dramatic seizures(!) of fate and steering of history, it took a turn toward something more engaging and more plausibly presented. Could happen...right?

Although I can see where the dissers are coming from, I found this film charming. Yeah, the script and acting could have been better, but man, what a story! Aimee Dubucq de Rivery, cousin of the French Empress Josephine, captured by pirates and sold into the Turkish ruler's harem, in later life ends up transforming Turkey into the modern age through her son. She was known as the Sultan Valideh, the Veiled Power, and she made herself and her son a bridge to the West.She must have been something and a half, and Amber O'Shea, with a pretty crappy script, somehow manages to sell it. And of course any harem run by F. Murray Abraham is my kind of harem.All in all, a pleasant couple of hours. I await the REAL movie of Naksh, the Sultan Valideh.

This film has all the trappings of a B movie. The costuming is remarkably bad (there's tulle and lame everywhere), the acting is hokey, and the writing a little less than mediocre.But I _love_ this film nonetheless. I own it and watch it every now and again. I enjoy the cheesiness, and it's best enjoyed with a friend or two over drinks and hearty commentary and giggles. It's a wonderful orientalist film with glitter and glam mixed with quite a bit of fantasy.It is based on a true story, and I am surprised every time to see it was actually filmed at Topkapi palace.

I have never seen such pathetic acting. I have never seen such a pathetic script.I cannot figure out how someone could ever pay to have this movie made.It was horiffyingly bad in every aspect.