User reviews

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.

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

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.

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.

We had more fun looking for the ridiculous mistakes.... From tire tracks in the mud to a reflector and a license plate on the wagon. A 1948 tombstone in the cemetery. Fake flowers and fake everything and MANY more! If you have time to sit through this boring movie, count the bloopers for yourself.

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.

The 2014 Sleeping Beauty is mediocre at best in pretty much every capacity, but at least I got a few laughs out of it. It's no 'The Room', but there's a chuckle or two in there.

This is just your average, run of the mill fairytale. Only with zombies and badly rendered CGI monsters. The prince is kind of a jerk this time and the princess is in the movie even less than in the original.

So the queen and king of Magicfantasyland have a baby daughter and hold a ceremony in the courtyard. The three good fairies are busy blessing her with vague, useless gifts like "truth" instead of chainsaw arms when an evil fairy (now Tambria rather than Maleficent) bursts in and curses the child to be pricked by a spindle before her 16th birthday. Years later, instead of hiding her way on her 16th, her parents take her to a party and let her run off with some dude. And hey, he just happens to have a spindle. As you may guess, trouble ensues.

Somewhere close by, a bratty prince and his goons are picking on his whipping boy (the prince is like 24 by the way). The whipping boy has been receiving poetry from Sleeping Beauty and has fallen in love with her. The brat prince discovers her kingdom's plight and runs off to face the evil Tamera and her gang of monster zombies-- goons and whipping boy in tow.

The Bad:

• The writing is bland and amateurish. Half the time, I wasn't sure whether to blame the actors or the script for a particularly terrible line. There's only so much you can do to make junk sound passable. And the exposition... Oh, the exposition.

• The plot. The story is pretty simple, but there are so many unanswered questions. Like, where is the prince's kingdom? Why do we never see it? Why does the prince have a whipping boy? Does everyone in this land get spankings at his age? What do you need another kingdom for? Don't you already have one? And as for the princess, why would you want to touch the tip a spindle-- curse or no? How did you write those letters while sleep? Why did the characters shed established personality traits and prejudices like a change of clothes? Why weren't the plot devices wearing their disguises? (I'm looking at you conveniently omnipresent commoner girl)

-The acting. I often wondered if some of these actors were reading from a teleprompter. I've never heard people fail so hard at expressing emotion. Though I suppose I'd be a hollow shell of a person if I were cast in this too. The Maleficent stand in (Olivia d'Abo) is flat which is a shame considering the potential in a role like that. The prince (Edward Lewis French) is given terrible material at best and extremely annoying at his worst. I believe Sleeping Beauty's mother may take the cake in the bad acting department. I almost wished she had more screen time.The sheer lack of damns given was remarkable.

• The filmography. The filming was clumsy and sometimes confusing. I'm no filming expert and I typically don't notice bad camera work. If I noticed it this time, there's definitely a problem.

The Good:

Okay, I'm really scraping the bottom here...

The musical score. I didn't really notice it. So it couldn't have been that bad, right?

The good fairies. The good fairies were no where near as annoying as the fairies in 'Maleficent'. And just to make sure of that, one of them was taken care of during the opening sequence and the other two were hardly seen again. Definitely an improvement.

Barrow (Finn Jones) didn't annoy me as the lead and actually did a decent job of playing the annoyed whipping boy the whole time. Though I had a hard time telling if this was actually good acting or if he was actually annoyed the whole time. I mean what with being involved in this mess and being tricked into sating the director's weird whipping boy fetish, who knows?

The ending. Everyone loves a good twist. But mostly, I was just happy that it was over.

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.

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.

Lots of effort was made to make a movie like this keeping in view, the scenery, the dress, the buildings, the carriages, the culture, the castle, the kingdom and the royalty life style, apart from the CGI's that were shown were all up to the mark, as the movie do not have a famous actor or actress it doesn't means that the movie is not good, on the other hand the movie was really good and the minutest details were covered with detailed analysis and relevance to the actual story. I liked the movie and after seen all I was thinking that my one and half hours was not wasted. The loyalty shown by the future kings subjects was also very appealing as they never left him alone in his deeds at whatever the circumstances were be. The dialog was really worth listening and the dresses and furniture all were showing that the movie needs much appreciation. I rate this movie 7 out 10 due to its detailed planning and execution and keeping the audience committed to the story till the end.

Apart from the terrible acting from an okay cast and some dodgy directing, this isn't too bad a story. As a film though, it's only average.

Though the cast has B-Movie king Casper Van Dien (who directed this flick), Catherine Oxenberg, and Michael York listed, their worth in this film is minimal. The real bad thing is their lack of spirit is tangible. Poor York is the narrator and appears to have literally phoned his part in. There's no emotion or feeling in his voice; something which is a basic requirement in a narrator. Even though, Van Dein and Oxenberg, as Sleeping Beauties regal parents, are asleep for the majority of the movie they actually appear to be sleepwalking in their "awake" scenes.

Even Olivia D'Abo who has a meatier role as the evil witch, Queen Tambria, ofttimes appears to be a somnambulist. The best actors in this little play are the Kings whipping boy, Barrow (Finn Jones) and the Prince Jayson (Edward Lewis French) along with his heavy Gruner (Gil Kolirin), and his soldiers.

What this film really appears to be is an exercise in how many Van Dien's you can get on the screen in one film... that would be all of them. Most families would have a picnic... the Van Diens make a movie.

The one thing that did surprise me was the location. For one, it actually worked. It even reminded me a little of the Hammer House Of Horror sets of far-off European principalities - it even came with a graveyard and earth clawing walking dead. Even the inside locations were decent. It was a delight to see proper stone walls. I would love to live in that mansion come castle.

That said, there were a lot of gaping holes in the story that Dien should have ironed out when filming. For example, there's one scene where Prince Jayson sends Barrow up the castle walls to secure a rope through the only open window. Instead of getting him to check the place out while he's up there, he orders him to come straight down and they will camp in the courtyard, for the night. Then later the next day, they're being chased by dead warriors and climb the rope to escape only to find it leads to a balcony, with no entrance into the castle... hhhmmm, if only somebody had looked around before then they wouldn't be in this predicament. I cannot believe they were so stupid back then. This is bad writing and directing.

There are some nice beasties in the film, though you can see when the budget started to run low. The lake monster is pretty good, as is the one which scales the outside of the building the first night they're there. However, near the climax of the film, the same monster is looking pretty funny and quite unrealistic as it prowls the dungeons.

On the whole, this film could have been a hell of a lot better had the "Quality" cast put the effort into their portrayals of their characters... the story had been tightened and all the holes filled... and ropey special effects thrown onto the cutting room floor. You shouldn't rely on CGI if the budget won't carry it, find another way round to entertain the audience.

If there's very little on the telly and it's miserable outside then you could give this a try. It'll waste an hour and a half.

I'm guessing Casper, having been excited with the experience of working at Mortal Kombat franchise for the first time, decided to make a semi-'Mortal Kombatish' movie, of which he thought it would kinda be appealing both to kids (the adolescents anyway) and the adults. That said, the movie might have even worked had it been made in the late 80's/ early to mid '90s period, but at this era, it's just all too outdated, shallow and one-dimensional. Plus, the teenage girl-like fairies, sleeping princesses and daffy impostor-princes on one side and the gory scenes of head-ripping on the other side... well, don't actually go hand in hand.

I also fail to get it why Casper every so often has to cast his family into the movies he chooses to play in. Catherine, with all the due respect for her pedigree, isn't much of an actress, neither is Grace. Maya's acting was the family's saving grace, as she managed to yield the genuine impression of a frightened, and depressed, yet wickedly cunning little character... but then, the overall sluggish and uninspired aura of the movie didn't help her qualities shine through. While I envision Maya as a potential successful actress, she needs to get herself out of the poor production cinema. Unlike her mother, she actually does, if only in a form of hope, make me believe she is up to the high-rated, classic productions. The Sleeping Beauty is but the beginning, and she is young enough to perfect her talents and career to the level she is worthy of.

Someone on the discussion board was wondering why Finn Jones accepted to do the role. Maybe the crew, who sensed in the preproduction the movie would suck, thought a high class young actor would come up as a saving grace, just as they though Michael York's narration would yield the story as thrilling or at least bearable.

Generally, an averagely endearing pastime of a movie, but hardly something to be remembered, either among the critics or the audience.

The acting,taking into account the script was terrible, was not bad for what they were given. It's a difficult one to sit through given the pace of this movie was painfully slow, the music about as lively as a funeral dirge, and special effects created by someone not familiar with computer animation. The rising of the dead from their graves was truly laughable as the bodies were immediately visible when they moved their arms. It must have been too hard to dig a more realistic looking graveyard. It's hard to imagine that this movie is duller than Sophie's Choice - a 3+ hour torture fest. This movie should be placed in an archive somewhere and forgotten. Better still, just destroy all copies of it and forget that it ever existed. I believe that it's a very bad sign when the stars are part if one family, dad and 3 daughters. It gives the impression that this was the only way the producers could acquire enough actors to fill all the parts.

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.

This is a adult movie, not a kids movie. Warning do not let your kids watch this unless you want them to see walking dead zombies.

The movie is what it is, which is a modern adult themed interpretation of a Disney classic. I got this for my wife because she wanted the Disney version, but we had a hard time finding that one anywhere, so I grabbed this for her in the mean time. I could tell from the cover that it was going to be a B-movie, but figured it would be an OK movie.

Well, the wife watched it one day when I was at work, and when I came home she was smiling and grinning, saying I really had to see this movie.

It has zombies and just the right amount of gore, which make it worth watching, Compared with other movies, I think this movie would have made Maleficent, look like a B-movie if it had its special effects budget.

I give it an 8 out of 10, and say with the right mindset going in, you wont be disappointed Its like a Chronicles of Narnia mixed with a little of the Night of the Living Dead

The script is generically cheesy (for a period piece), and the two lead characters are thinly written. However, the film has enough strong acting and emotional weight to truly engage you.

Also, as a sleeping beauty reimagining goes, this is admittedly a more elaborate (if flawed) story than Disney's 'Maleficent'.

If you want a good film stay away, there's very little of quality to find here apart from some decent costumes and average at best cinematography. If you're looking for a bad but enjoyable flick then it might be worth a watch.

1/10: Very poor

Look, sometimes you just need a bit of variety in your life, you know? Of course I didn't have high expectations. The Asylum surprises every now and again, but they have their reputation for a reason; in the latter part of his career Casper Van Dien unfortunately hasn't been very discriminating in the projects he takes on. It's not that there's anything abjectly terrible about this, I don't think, and it's actually better than I anticipated - only, 'Sleeping Beauty' is commonly characterized by heavy-handed, forthright brusqueness in most every regard, dampening whatever value it may have to offer. Maybe I'm being overly generous but I don't know if I can even blame Van Dien in this case, who also serves as director; I'm inclined to think it's the oversight of the producers, and of The Asylum at large, whose guiding hands have led this feature to such an end. It's not as awful as its reputation would portend, but given the general tactlessness with which it was made, it's also difficult to specifically derive ideal enjoyment from it.

There is little to no subtlety or nuance to be had in any aspect of the picture, and as a result it feels at times like the bare minimum effort is being applied, and/or that the proceedings are bereft of authenticity or perhaps sincerity. This isn't true across the board - costume design, hair and makeup, and practical effects are all pretty great, and I can honestly say 'Sleeping beauty' can claim higher quality than other titles I've seen. Still, one readily detects a curt falseness in the acting first, then the direction, though even these have moments of more commendable strength. Some of the special effects are decent enough, though of course the grander they try to be, and the more prominently they are, the worse the CGI looks. Even the production design and art direction ride a line between being lovingly detailed, and bald-faced in their contrivance.

Meanwhile, I don't think the screenplay attributed to Van Dien and R. Dessertine is all that bad overall; in the broad strokes the narrative, scene writing, and characters are solid, suitable material for a fantasy film, and an adaptation of the classic fairy tale. However, above all when it comes to even the slightest measure of exposition or plot development, one is forced to wonder if the writing team has ever watched another picture. The narration (poor Michael York), opening sequence, and repetition later on of the same plot points are all awfully forced; viewers better come with foreknowledge of the long-gone practice of the whipping boy, because the movie doesn't actually explain this itself. Moreover, one crucial detail of the nature of "kind of sort of" protagonist Barrow is left totally unexplained until it's poorly inserted as a revelation in the last act. The climax is a tad unconvincing, the ending is altogether shoddy - and please note the name of a young supporting character to be introduced partway through, a detail which doesn't even try to hide the fact that it's outright lifted from another title.

It's not that care and hard work wasn't poured into this to any degree; it's distinctly uneven, but I recognize the value in the production just as surely as I recognize its weaknesses. It's just that under the auspices of The Asylum, I feel like those involved were robbed of the opportunity to make the best fantasy they could have. A little more time developing the screenplay would have smoothed out the rough edges in the storytelling; a little more time and resources devoted to any other element, or simply more takes of particular scenes or lines, would have surely painted over the deficiencies that we see in the finished film as it is. Sadly, however, if any of this were true, then it just wouldn't be an Asylum piece, would it? The company is known for churning out content quickly and cheaply, so here we are. Genuinely, I had a reasonably good time watching this; it's a fair way to pass the time as far as I'm concerned, and you could do a lot worse. On the other hand, unless you're super curious or a huge fan of someone involved, there's also regrettably just not much reason to watch 'Sleeping beauty.' C'est la vie.