Even those of you who hate 'The Asylum', and
you're out there, even though I'm not sure why, you gotta
admit that this one is kinda clever. Mockbusting the
actual 'Avengers' would be difficult, costly, and probably
ultimately illegal, but the Grimm Brothers have been dead for
centuries and their properties are fair game. I know
Disney likes to think they own them, and everything else on
the planet, but they do not. So here we are with
'Avengers Grimm', the tale of the sisters of Fairytale Land
banding together to do battle against an oppressive foe.
And it's not nearly as bad as you would think.
Rumpelstiltskin (Casper Van Dien) is on the offensive.
Just needs to take over the castle of Snow White (Lauren
Parkinson) and victory is assured. But Rumple has a
proposal for fair Snow… simply allow him and his army to pass
through the magic mirror, to a place where assholes with
money, strong chins and brutal armies are celebrated… that
being the time and place where we live… and she can have her
kingdom back. Considering Rumple has already caused poor
Snow great personal harm, she was almost ready to make the
deal until her avenging princesses appear on the scene, these
being Rapunzel (Rileah Vanderbilt) and her magical hair,
Sleeping Beauty (Marah Fairclough) and her powers of instant
narcolepsy, and Cinderella (Milynn Sarley) with her powers of
matter transformation. Or something. I'm not sure
exactly. You see I kind of understand the powers of the
other princesses, Snow having the ability to freeze stuff is a
bit of a stretch… and they couldn't actually use Princess Elsa
since Disney does legitimately own her… but I don't know where
Cinderella's power of matter transformation comes from.
Anyway, somehow Rumple and Snow go through the mirror, Red
Riding Hood (Elizabeth Peterson) shows up searching for Wolf
(Kimo Leopoldo), and all of them end up falling through the
Magic Mirror, with the mirror shattering in the process.
Now everybody's in 2015 Los Angeles. In
the minutes that passed between Snow and Rumple entering the
Mirror, and the rest of the princesses, it's actually been
years. Rumple is now Mayor of L.A., and he has big, big
plans. Snow has been trying to stop him ever since,
patiently waiting for her girls to show up and lend a
hand. And Red. As you know, she's not royalty so
she's kind of looked down upon in a class oppression kind of
way. Except by Cinderella, who we also know is royalty
by marriage and not by blood so she can kind of relate to
Red. None of this is actually said, but it is
implied. Mostly by me. Worse still is that Rumple has
managed to get an unwilling ally in Iron John (Lou Ferrigno),
who is, well, made of Iron now.
Rumple is pretty darned evil and even though his powers of
mind control don't work on the princesses, but like we
mentioned, not all of them are royalty and thus not
immune. Though Cinderella probably should be
susceptible, but she's not… and I officially apologize for
thinking too much during this movie. And there is still
a shard of the magic mirror floating around which, if Rumple
gets ahold of it, he can bring his army from NeverNeverland
over and rule the Earth. Unless our Grimm Avengers can
stop him!
Written and directed by some dude named Jeremy Inman who we
can see has done a lot of work for The Asylum in other roles,
we actually kind of enjoyed 'Avengers Grimm'. And this
is why I've been actively begging for The Asylum to employ me
in some avenue over these years, because even though I might
start out in Craft Services, I'm pretty sure eventually they
would let me direct something. They promote from within,
these guys, and you gotta admire that.
One of the things you have to like about 'Avengers Grimm' is
that it is keenly self-aware. This is a movie that does
not take itself too terribly serious, but also has the good
sense not to play itself for camp which does allow the movie
to strike a fairly delicate balance between having a good time
and still acknowledge the seriousness at hand… say like 'The
Avengers' for example. There is also quite a bit of
action in this movie. Is it good action? For the
genre, yes it is. What that means is that if you spend a
lot of your time watching these types of movies, which we do
here at the FCU, this one comes off better than most in that
regard. There are some lulls and some strangeness in
this action, say like the battle between Red and Cindy in
which I'm pretty sure one of the stunt professionals was
actually a six foot man as opposed to the five foot Red, but
you do the best you can with what you got.
The performances were hit and miss as I'm sure you can
imagine, hits like Casper Van Dien chewing up and spitting out
scenery as Rumpelstiltskin, as Casper seems to do a little
better as a strong chinned villain as opposed to a strong
chinned hero, and Lou Ferrigno was in this movie which is also
appreciated. The ladies, while every single one of them
are very well formed, is where some of the misses come
in. We enjoyed the strength of Rileah Vanderbilt's
Rapunzel and the attitude of Marah Fairclough's Sleeping
Beauty, but Laura Parkinson's version of Snow White and
Elizabeth Peterson's interpretation of Red Riding Hood seemed
off kilter. Both were supposed to be hardcore warriors,
but I just didn't get that from the characters.
Unfortunately I was blinded by the hotness of Milynn Sarley
and her Cinderella to truly focus in on anything she was doing
in this movie outside of thanking my Lord and Savior that she
exists. My apologies.
Again, if you watch these kind of these of movies, this is one
of the better ones, truth be told. If you don't… You
will think it's terrible. Which forces us to ask… "Why
do you continue to watch these kinds of movies?"
