Sleeping Beauty

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.

Decent watch, probably wouldn't watch it again, and can't recommend.

Wow, they did this on a shoestring budget. The monsters and effects were interesting, but clearly cheap (not bad, but cheap), even at the time. The zombies were a hair better, and yes, they added monsters and zombies to this.

This is basically if Maleficient (I'm sure that Disney has had the free-license laws re-written so that they own the movie rights to pieces of stories they lifted from free market fairy tales), or Tambria, actually attempted to rule the human kingdom while everyone slept, stuck in an eternal cycle.

The writing is probably what got this movie made in the first place, and its the best part of this. I fully recognize that they use character transformation, growth (at least in presentation) of the characters' morals, and very decent pacing of arrogance, adversity, advancement, on repeat, slowly building up to the climax.

The only one you might recognize in this is Jessica Van Dien (Greenhouse Academy), and she's pretty, but I don't know if I'd send man after man to their deaths for her. Sadly, it's a bad sign when one starts to consider the attractiveness of actors to the quality of a movie, and I can't say there is enough to convince anyone to watch this. It not even that it's a bad movie, its just not above the average when so many other movies are.

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

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.