Riddles of the Sphinx
Riddles of the Sphinx
| 13 June 2008 (USA)
Riddles of the Sphinx Trailers

An astronomer and a cryptographer uncover a series of ancient tunnels, unwittingly unleashing a deadly Sphinx. In order to trap the Sphinx back in its tomb and stop impending destruction, our explorers must solve a series of complicated and possibly deadly riddles.

Reviews
Solemplex To me, this movie is perfection.
SmugKitZine Tied for the best movie I have ever seen
Catangro After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.
Caryl It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties. It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.
TheLittleSongbird Watching Riddles of the Sphinx with little else to do, I was anticipating little and got almost nothing to write home about. Dino Meyer is a sexy and decently charismatic lead. However when it comes to redeeming qualities that's where Riddles of the Sphinx ends. The sets look minimal and nothing to done to make them interesting, and the costumes were reminiscent of the actors having had a fantasy-adventure movie fancy-dress party(or even about to have one). The editing is choppy and the effects particularly with the monster of the title are hopelessly cheap in quality. The script is aimless and filled with unfunny lines that were no doubt meant to be witty, and the story is structurally thin, unoriginal(if it was trying to pay homage to Indiana Jones it took the homage to extreme levels that it feels like a rip-off instead) and has no excitement whatsoever. The characters are badly-written clichés(SyFy clichés in alternative to genre clichés) with none of them likable or developed enough. I was especially irritated by the girl who seems to be cleverest of the bunch, I've seen that plot-device before and something about it always annoys me. The rest of the acting apart from Meyer suffers from the writing and characters, Lochlyn Munro is an especially unconvincing hero. Overall, with the exception of Meyer Riddles of the Sphinx just didn't engage. 2/10 Bethany Cox
Lunaroseice I couldn't take this movie seriously from very early on in the movie. The CGI department, or whomever was giving them instructions, obviously didn't know what a sphinx looks like and decided to go with a strange looking griffin instead. Even I could tell the difference between the two creatures while I was still in grade school.The acting was fairly poor. The make-up department should never be hired by anyone ever again. The bald guy looks like his head was shaved the day they stared filming and make-up never even tried to blend the skin tone.The script was pathetic. I've seen some bad stuff on SciFi and this is one of the worst. The male lead just comes off as corny while the female lead is normally a much better actress. The little girl suffers from the Wesley Crusher syndrome. People don't like this so why do they keep using it as a plot device I will never understand.
ctomvelu-1 The delectable Dina Meyer and the normally competent Lochlyn Munro co-star in this turkey made for The Sci-Fi Channel, about archaeologists unleashing an unkillable monster from an Egyptian tomb. Meyer looks great in black leather and shooting two guns at a time a la Tomb Raider Lara Croft while Munro simply looks like an idiot in an Indiana Jones hat about two sizes too big for his head. The movie goes nowhere once the monster is unleashed, which happens about five minutes in. At times, the creature looks like a poor man's griffin; at other times, it morphs into a bad copy of Inhotep from the first two THE MUMMY movies. The dialog is from hunger, as is the acting. Other than tuning in to get a look at the beautiful Meyer, this one is best skipped.
nevadaluke 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.