Review of The Thief of Bagdad (1924) by Paul S — 08 May 2005

Another ambitious Douglas Fairbanks movie. This one tries to top the extravagant sets of Robin Hood, with extravagant special effects. There are some cool ones here. A magic rope that suspends itself in the air, a flying carpet, a giant lizard that many reviews identify as a dragon though it's never verified in the film, a horse with wings galloping across the sky, and an army that appears out of thin air.

Fairbanks stars as the titular thief. In his guise as a prince he calls himself Prince Ahmed, which may or may not be his real name, as no one ever calls him by any other name. Early on he steals a magic rope and decides to use it to rob the palace. Inside, he falls in love with the princess, apparently just based on her looks, because she's asleep at the time. He steals one of her slippers and nothing else. It takes a day for his sidekick to figure out why he's gone all loopy, but once he does, he suggests to Ahmed that they sneak back in and kidnap the princess. They steal some prince disguises and sneak in with the rest of the princess' suitors on the day that she's supposed to choose a husband. Now if I were the princess, I would have chosen the guy who brought the ape, because I've always wanted my own monkey butler, but that would have made the movie shorter. She immediately falls in love with Ahmed. It's not exactly a miracle since the competition consists of one guy who looks seriously constipated, another one who's a fat narcoleptic, and the bad guy who looks like he's recovering from chemotherapy. The princess' fortune teller has predicted that she will marry the first suitor to touch the rose bush, and the mongol prince's spy has informed him of this. As the mongol prince reaches out for the bush, he disturbs a bee, who in turn startles Ahmed's horse, who launches Ahmed head first into the rose bush. This pretty much seals the outcome of the movie, I mean you just don't screw with a prophecy, but for the sake of entertainment there's more. The mongol outs Ahmed as the thief who tried to rob the palace, and the princess sends the suitors on a quest for priceless treasures to buy Ahmed time to prove his worth.

This is a fun one. The two and a half hours just flew by, though I was a little disappointed in Ahmed's solution when faced with defeating the mongol army single-handedly. Given the power to wish for anything, I would have wished for a giant monster that eats mongols and poops gold coins. Ahmed chooses to go a different way. Oh, well, a win's a win.