Snow White and the Seven Samurai

This is just...I don't know what this is. It's so, so horrendously bad and there were so many things to pick apart that I will leave the other reviews that have already done that to cover them and instead go in for the throat of some of the moments that stood out for me. Like why a young, newly inherited gazillionair woman, who knows her step-mother is a raving nutter and gunning for her would be walking around the street at night with a bloody great ring around her neck, instead of driving a car daddy surely brought her? And how have the group of Samurai, remembering WHAT Samurai are meant to be, graduated from Samurai school without learning the art of stealth...because I've watched a bunch of footy players in their boots run around on gravel and not made as much noise as these girls did sneaking across the lawn, and then don't even get me started on the three guards they take out literally right in front of them ("nice shot" indeed) in plain view of the other guards but who don't notice them lying right there dead on the ground next to them.

I do have to give a special shout out to the staggeringly bad acting of the step-mother, who only talks with her teeth clenched to show how very, seethingly, outrageously, angry, OR how very conniving and cunning and greedily gleeful she is; but definitely don't take your eyes off her because her expressions are the same for both situations so you might get confused if you're not paying attention. I gave one star for the thing that I thought was maybe the only reason anyone should watch this dumpster fire and that I hope was a deliberate attempt at a public service announcement via movie...the horrible budget version 'of with great power comes great responsibility'. In the scenes where the Samurai are teaching Anya how to "fight", the whole process is slowed down and verbal explanations are given that are pretty much exactly what, as Luna even says in one scene, are basic self defence. Each of these scenes are filmed as though they are attempting to show the audience, some basic and common sense ways to defend themselves. I don't know if that was the thinking behind it but it's like you're suddenly 14 again and back in self defence for women at gym class and it was that, and the work the women in those scenes put in that got the movie one star and the other was because it looked lonely on its own.

I kid you not with the heading for my review. It has been a while since I have encountered a movie so comprehensively bad that in almost no aspect of the creative process could they have done it any worse. I actually think this is a deliberate attempt to make a bad movie, with all the cliche's, shortcomings and well established nuances executed to perfection.

There is absolutely no point in examining any paritcular aspect of the movie; script, direction etc at all, because suffice to say, its on a level so convincingly bad that finding a baseline for comparison would be almost impossible. This film is the baseline for bad.. and yet, it isn't without charm in some weird and wonderful way, which is why I firmly belive this was a deliberate attempt to produce a piece almost as a mockery or monument (take your pick) to bad film making... and if you don't believe me just remember Eric Roberts has a 'cameo' so that should be all the convincing you need.

Anyway if your prepared to go in for the wild ride and have some fun, this could be the movie for you. I'm deadly serious with the score. It's a piece of movie magic no one should miss.

Hightly recommend.

Where to start? The movie is so bad. The budget must have been a few hundred dollars. You can tell because the lawyer of the big mafia boss, who supposedly is worth billions drives a Kia Soul! Fighting scenes were probably choreographed by elementary school kids. The story is ridiculous, doesn't make sense. Who writes garbage like this? The acting is so bad that the cast must have been taken from a pool of rejected actors who wouldn't be hired by anyone. Eric Roberts probably worked for free just to add another credit to his record of being the most prolific actor of all time. That record should have an asterisk (*) because doing garbage like this, which he has done plenty, should not count. All in all, there is not a single thing you can rescue from this awful waste of time of a movie.

This is a definitive bad movie that I couldn't look away from. It is a massive train wreck, but it is a train filled with sex toys and fireworks! Nothing in this movie works, but it's put together so that everything in this movie works. I'm talking the script, the acting, the sound effects, the tacky music they threw in. It's all bad.

Everyone had swords when clearly it would've worked for one or two people to carry them. I get the need for them because samurai is in the title, but they probably still could've made it work with far less. That everybody had swords and guns made nobody special or unique.

They tried really hard to put walking sounds into the movie. I don't know if it's just something I noticed, but it was even to the point that they were walking on carpet and the sound effects of them walking on concrete was being used. There were so many examples of bad audio that made the movie so much better that I am truly grateful for.

"I almost died, but I'm not dead yet." That's an actual quote from this movie. And that's not the worst piece of dialogue you'll find here. An antidote conundrum leading to this classic quote is unforgettable. There is so much more that make this movie so much worse. I have no doubt this is like one of those movies that you could watch again and find things you missed to make it even better than it was the first time. Only if you watch Snow White and the Seven Samurai again you will find to make it worse.

Now, from the movie's title and the movie's cover, I figured that this was most likely a mockbuster from The Asylum. Lo and behold, my assumptions were true. "Snow White and the Seven Samurai" is indeed a mockbuster from The Asylum.

I've seen enough dubious movies from The Asylum to be able to spot their movies a mile away. But there are actually the occasional good movie among the questionable movies that The Asylum spews out. And who knows, maybe "Snow White and the Seven Samurai" would be one such movie? And thus, I opted to watch the movie on account of it being a movie that I hadn't already seen. But I harbored no expectations to director Michael Su.

The script that writers Marc Gottlieb and Jacob David Smith concocted was actually not that bad, if you just look past the movie's title and take it for a random martial arts action movie that stumbled out of the 1990s. All that was missing was Cynthia Rothrock or Don 'The Dragon' Wilson.

Of the entire cast ensemble, I was familiar only with Eric Roberts and Anthony Jensen. The acting performances in the movie were actually fair enough, well aside from the over-acting put on by actress Gina Vitori.

The CGI effects in the movie were laughable. Especially the scene where the building exploded; it was so bad I had to go back a second time just to watch it again, laughing throughout it both times. It looked like something that was discarded in a 1990s computer game, because it looked too awful.

There is a fair amount of action and fighting in the movie, which definitely helped carry the movie a long way.

This movie is as cheesy as you would assume it would be given its title. So at least there was no surprise there.

My rating of director Michael Su's 2024 movie "Snow White and the Seven Samurai" lands on a five out of ten stars.