Change Your Image
Vivacious-Virgo
Reviews
Sleeping Beauty (2014)
Bad but Unintentionally Entertaining at Times?
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.
Happily Ever After (1989)
Okay
I was rummaging in my old things a while back and pulled out a bunch of old movies. This was one of them. This movie is VERY enjoyable for anyone to watch as a child. I remember my brother and I laughing at it as children, but seeing it as a teenager or an adult probably wouldn't be a good idea. The story is alright, but the animation is not very good. If anything shined in this movie it was the females dwarfs (i forgot what they are called ^_^). Their characters were all lovable and even a bit memorable. Snow White and the Prince, as always, were lifeless and cardboard. Another thing that sticks out in this movie was one song titled "Thunderella's Song". The melody is pretty and it's definitely a cute and catchy tune. So cute and catchy that I remembered it through the years as I would Aladdin or the Lion King. This movie is alright for one watch. I'd give it a 4/ 10.
Quest for Camelot (1998)
Well... at least they tried
This movie was a uge disappointment and I even had to change the channel sometimes from the pain. Sad, but true. The plot has a little potential, but in my opinion, this is nothing more than another Disney wannabee. The characters were not the well developed at all and the singing voice actor for the hero of the story didn't fit him well... at all. The movie lacked that feel good feeling that you feel after even some of the worst animated movies. The songs are not memorable at all and most of them weren't very good. The romantic relationship between the two main characters was a bit dull and nor lively or witty. The only good thing about this movie was the comic relief at times and for that, I'll give it a 2/ 10.
National Security (2003)
Hilarious!
I for one thought that this film was hilarious. I am African American but was not at all offended by this movie because the character Lawrence plays does NOT represent me and many black Americans. Now I have known a few people who have acted like Lawrence's character, mostly older people who have experienced prejudice. But I wasn't offended by this just as I wasn't offended by Washington's character is Training Day. This is a character in a script. He does NOT represent reality whatsoever. As for white Americans being offended, if you put yourself in Officer Hank's shoes, I understand. But if you look at the movie not to be serious, but to be fun or comical instead of concentrating on his woes, you might find it enjoyable. If you can't do that, too bad. No ones making you.
I'd give this movie a 8/10. P.S: Some people said that Black Knight was better O.o If anything, that was one of his worst!