Sleeping Beauty

it seems be only expression of an actor to be director and impose his family to public attention. it is not important the manner or the plot, the acting or the script. more than not inspired work, Sleeping Beauty is chaotic. the dialogs are childish, the events without sense,each scene - expression of lost courage and ideas. a film like a family game who could be , at each step, only improvisation. and that fact is almost creepy. because the subject has a high potential. because the experience of Casper van Dien as actor could be basis of a better story. because it is only a film for the family and friends of director and the great question remains why the movie is on the big screen. more than uninspired film, it remains strange. because it has out of credible purpose.

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.

Sweet Christ, this movie is awesome! It also has no production values whatsoever and is generally just very badly made. I honestly don't know how to rate something like this. I was entertained pretty much from start to finish, but I guess for all the wrong reasons. Writer/Director Casper Van Dien (Johnny Rico from "Starstip Troopers") shows some real audacity in how he handles the story: the evil witch has an army of zombies, gives shelter to a murderous sea monster AND rips a guy's head straight off (a guy who bleeds awful effects), that really ought to count for something. If you get to make your debut as a director with a movie about Sleeping Beauty and the first thing that comes to mind is "hey, let's put in zombies", you are entitled to some of my respect. "Sleeping Beauty" will have tremendous trouble finding an audience though: the movie's way too creepy and gory for the kiddies, but the title won't attract many fans of terrible B-movies either. It'll probably sink into obscurity very quickly like everything else The Asylum Studio makes, but I would say...unjustly? This terrible movie has something I can't put my finger on, something that makes me want to see it again someday (and I'll never ever find out what).

The first 10 minutes seemed quite promising. At the beginning I really thought this movie would be something great, kind of like Lord of the Rings or some other well made adventure film. The photo is good, costumes and props were realistic looking, and the scenery was great, as was the music and what CGI was implemented. The Castle is real and looks just as a fairytale castle should look. I liked most of the characters except the prince who wasn't very royal. Right from the start I fell in love with the evil fairy (Olivia d'Abo), marvelous woman.

However. With the means to go to Bulgaria to shoot a film like this one with good costumes and to be honest pretty OK selection of actors (I'll get back to this in a moment), you would presume the result to be, if not true to the story, then at least providing you with an hour or two of adventurous excitement. But this project fails on all parts. I kept telling myself that "there's a twist to it, I'll wait and see", but no. No twist, no surprise, just funny looking zombies and what I felt was poorly inspired acting throughout the movie. It seemed to me as a lazy attempt to shoot the movie live, kind of like 'playing as we go'. Some of the actors have great potential, yet here they simply did not perform. And, who wrote the script, was there a script? - Interesting questions.

This project may have been a vacation event by Casper, a story for kids. A children's movie. But somehow I can't combine that with certain brutal scenes involved. I'm left with a strange feeling that the whole film is an experiment made together with family and friends. I'm not alone feeling this way, am I? I would give it a 1 out of 10, but the castle was impressive so I'll be generous enough to give a 2.

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.