Sleeping Beauty (2014) Reviews

• Unbelievably Bad acting

  swedish_chef_dave2014-06-12

  I was hoping for something along the lines of a Disney type kids drama but the fact that the leading characters had messy hair and had dialogue as wooden as a 70's robot made me realise this was something unique. I managed to last about 15 minutes until I wanted to gouge out my eyes and drill a huge hole in my head to make it all stop.It is such a long time since I have seen a movie so awful, how it managed to to get a 4 I will never know, I would have given it less than 1 but there is no option. Today in this financially challenged time I find it incredulous that this type of junk direct to DVD rubbish keeps being made, I would have hoped that the financiers had closed off the lines of credit, the sooner the better in my own opinion.

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• Low Budget, Lower Expectations

  s_quinland2014-07-13

  The Script: Horrid and Stilted. The Acting: Horrid and Stilted. The Costumes look like a cross between "bring your own" and bad Renaissance Faire rentals. The Music was ridiculously melodramatic, as though they thought that would help the audience to care about what was happening. The castle set looks like they were filmed in someone's backyard with about half a dozen extras trying to look like a "kingdom". There is about as much emotion as a chess match. While the Sleeping Beauty story is one of my all time favorites and I have seen and read almost every Sleeping Beauty story, book and film, I couldn't get past the first 20 minutes of this awful, awful film. Don't bother.

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• I'm not 100% that there is much of an audience for this one.

  MartinHafer2014-05-21

  Sleeping Beauty is a production of The Asylum—a film production company known for making so-called 'mockbusters'. These mockbusters are films that are released to coincide with the release of big studio epics in order to capitalize on the hubbub surrounding the big-budget movies. They feature titles that are VERY similar to the bigger films—and this movie is being released just before Disney's big summer release Malificent! A few other examples of their films are Atlantic Rim, Death Racers, American Battleship, Snakes on a Train…and many others that have titles almost like blockbuster films. Because of this, it's obvious the film will have a low budget and very modest pretensions—and most likely will be a film you'll see coming direct to DVD. And, I might add, it's filmed entirely in Bulgaria. The cast for Sleeping Beauty is very, very unusual. It seems like this production was a real family affair. In addition to acting in the film, Casper Van Dien directed the film. This isn't so unusual. However, his wife (Catherine Oxenberg) also is in the film…as are Van Dien's three daughters! This makes for a most unusual pedigree. However, despite being a family film, in many ways I would NOT recommend this film for your entire family! Nor would I recommend it to the youngest of Van Dien's kids. This is because this odd version of the classic story has a lot of intense gore as well as a reference to rape—and I really am not sure why these were included in the film. The first portion of the film is much like the Perrault story as well as the Disney tale. A king and queen have a daughter and they invite everyone to come celebrate with them EXCEPT for the one person who happens to be a complete maniac and almost all-powerful sorceress. When this nasty lady arrives and is miffed by never receiving an invitation, she curses the girl to die by being pricked by splinter from a spinning wheel by the time she turns 16. However, the good fairies are able to change the curse—instead making it so the princess will sleep for as long as it takes until a prince of good heart will come and kiss her. Weirdly, they also put the entire kingdom to sleep when she falls asleep —even though this seems like an incredibly bad idea as it leaves the kingdom to the nasty sorceress. So far this is pretty much the classic story. However, this is all shown in the first quarter of the film! Having the prince battle his way in, kill the sorceress and kiss the sleeping girl clearly had to be padded out…a lot. So, they created an all-new story about a wastrel idiot of a prince, his lackey friends and his whipping boy. Is this interesting? Mildly—but often the characters behave inconsistently and you wonder why anyone would follow this prince, since he is a complete and total moron. But as I said above, there is a lot of adult content tossed in as well as some incredibly bad dialog from time to time. The overall effect isn't bad…but it is muddled and not particularly noteworthy unless you thought the original story should be spiced up with zombies, spinal columns being yanked out, be-headings and the like. It's not good…but not completely terrible either if you absolutely must see a classic fairy tale infused with zombies and the like. I do wonder, though, who exactly would really want to see this one---it's certainly not the average viewer.

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• Very, very weird but not a complete waste of time

  TheLittleSongbird2014-05-31

  Sleeping Beauty is far from great, far from good even, but for The Asylum it's okay. The costumes and scenery do look quite nice and the photography while rushed in places certainly could have been far worse. Maya Van Dien is very endearing as one of the more interesting characters while Finn Jones is good carrying the movie, and the ending is fun with some goofy suspense. Sleeping Beauty starts off very well too with a great classic fairy-tale atmosphere. However, much of the rest of the acting is not very good, Casper Van Dien and Catherine Oxenberg is rather wooden as underwritten characters; Grace Van Dien is beautiful but never rises above okay due to not having much of note to work with; Olivia D'Abo's performance is very inconsistent and not in a good way with hammy moments and bland ones, and worst of all Edward Lewis French plays the Prince as a truly annoying idiot. The characters are fairy-tale clichés and that would not have been a bad thing- characters can be clichéd and still be good enough- if they didn't have such cardboard personalities or acted so inconsistently. The script is the very meaning of clunky with parts that come across as really cheesy and in a way to make anybody hearing it cringe. The story feels very dragged out in places as well as structurally rather muddled and while it starts off well it later goes over-the-top with the violence and gore that it feels like a completely different movie and makes one question who the movie is aimed at. The music does sound pedestrian, the narration while delivered in a very distinguished manner by Michael York wasn't necessary and at times over-explanatory and the special effects do often look cheap with stilted movement. All in all, Sleeping Beauty is not good but it is not that terrible either, nowhere near among The Asylum's worst. 4/10 Bethany Cox

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• Horrible, waste of Time.

  binthaider-755-8228492014-09-21

  So So Bad. Waste of money and time. Acting is so bad it makes you cringe. So many plots and plans that just do not make sense. It's comical but in a very bad way. How can EVERY Actor in this movie get it so very wrong? Who wrote the Lines, 6 year old? Most probably the worst movie I have ever seen and believe me after going back to watch the old Batman & Robin Drama with the 'BOOMS' & 'CLASH' that is saying something! Ridiculous from start to finish. Maybe for 4/5 year olds but certainly not for anyone older, let alone teenagers or adults. The movie industry must have a lot of money to waste to bring out this trash. So much potential just wasted.

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