Monday 19 October 2015

Avengers Grimm (2015)



Depending on how you want to look at it, this is either The Asylum doing "The Avengers, but with fairy tale characters instead of superheroes" or "Once Upon A Time done as an action movie".  It certainly appears to be a mash-up of those two properties, as we'll see.

The wicked Rumpelstiltskin launches an assault on the kingdom of Snow White and her husband (who is never seen on screen).  His army is the kingdom's own, magically brainwashed to serve him.  He does not want dominion over the fairy tale realm however; he wants Snow White to use her magic mirror to send him and his forces to our world, where his sole mastery of magic will allow him to conquer us with ease.

As villainous plans go, it's not a bad one, actually.

Snow's not cooperative however, and in the ensuing struggle she and Rumpelstiltskin plunge through the mirror together, leaving his minions behind.

Some time later (the movie is really, really unspecific about time frames), Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel and Red (Riding Hood) also travel through the mirror in an effort to rescue Snow White.  The action thus moves entirely to our world, which I am sure has budget-saving aspects which were not lost on the film-makers.

As Asylum films go, this is a pretty good one.  There's some just silly enough to be fun moments, enough oblique fairy tale references to suggest that someone on set was a genuine fan of such stories, and van Dien makes a surprisingly effective bad guy.

Which is not to say that it is actually good, of course.  It's got some sloppy writing of course, and the acting ... well, when Casper van Dien and Lou Ferrigno - yes, that Lou Ferrigno - are two of your best three performers, you definitely have a problem (the other one of the three is Elizabeth Peterson as Red - she's far and away the best of the female actors).  Oh, and the effects are pretty bad too.

If you're the kind of person who enjoys trashy schlock (guilty!), then you might find something to like here.  Otherwise you can skip it.

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