Sleeping Beauty (2014)

Sleeping Beauty: Directed by Casper Van Dien. With Finn Jones, Grace Van Dien, Catherine Oxenberg, Casper Van Dien. When a young Prince and his trusted aid learn of a beautiful Princess’s cursed eternal slumber, they embark on a journey to rescue her. They must battle an evil queen and legions of undead monsters before she will be free.

“Sleeping Beauty is far from great, far from good even, but for The Asylum itu0026#39;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 Du0026#39;Abou0026#39;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 didnu0026#39;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 wasnu0026#39;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 Asylumu0026#39;s worst. 4/10 Bethany Cox”