Not long ago, I paid a long overdue visit to the library of Cannon Films by covering the utterly irredeemable crapfest known as King Solomon’s Mines.  Now, I am about to make another real bad choice and dive into The Asylum.

Ah yes, the schlock factory, The Asylum.  They make their living off of making movies with titles that seem somewhat familiar to dummies who A) don’t know the name of the movie they think they want to see and B) too stupid enough to think the movie they saw a commercial for coming out to the theaters is already on demand or in video stores.  Trust me, there are a ton of these dummies out there. I worked at a video store for years and it never ceased to amaze me how often we were asked for a movie that had not even yet come out in theaters to see if we had any copies of it already.

If it wasn’t for The Asylum, the Sci-Fi Channel wouldn’t have gone to shit and changed their name to something real dumb.  As an upside, though, this world would be without Sharknado, and that is not a world I’d like to live in.

Anyway, this movie is Avengers Grimm.  I guess it is some sort of cash grab based on the successful Avengers movie franchise, and the television show Grimm…?  That show that I’m not even sure is still on anymore?  OR it might be Brothers Grimm – that movie from a real long time ago with two guys that I’m drawing a blank on who they were that starred in that movie.  Was Matt Damon in it?  I dunno.  It might be playing into the Zenescope Entertainment comics from the Grimm Fairy Tales series that all feature hot ass women doing bad ass things.  I really don’t know what they are aping here besides the obvious Avengers part of the title.  This movie is surely gonna blow.  But let’s take a look at the quick synopsis from Netflix:

“Snow White and three other fairy-tale princesses enter the real world to thwart the villainous Rumpelstiltskin’s scheme to enslave all humanity.”

Snow White, huh?  Is this the Kristin Stewart Snow White?  What about these other princesses?  Are they name brand or just generic fairy tale princesses?  Fine, whatever, I’ll start breaking down this movie… and my fragile state of existence.

Holy shit…  Quickly, we get “Once Upon a Time…” followed immediately by the title of the movie followed immediately by Casper Van Dien.  Fuck.  This is gonna be a bad night.  At least we now have a hot chick with some boobs running through a field with a black corset.  That’s hot.  Apparently it’s Snow White.  And her castle is under attack by Rumpelstiltskin (Van Dien).

Anyway, Rumpelbuttskins is attacking stuff and wanting to take over the fairy tale lands.  He killed Snow White’s husband who apparently is a king.  He wants her to open some stupid portal to go do some stupid stuff elsewhere and he’ll leave her alone.  Before he goes through the portal, Snow White makes a dull icicle and tries to kill him, but Rumpelmintz takes them both through the portal.  Four more hot chicks show up who are apparently Snow White’s posse.  One of them, for sure, is Red Riding Hood.  The others?  Couldn’t tell you.  One’s got red hair, one’s got purple hair, the other is a blonde straight out of a Hooters from San Antonio.

I’m less than eight minutes in, and I hate this movie so much.

Some monster guy pushes Red Riding Hood into the portal and now suddenly everyone ends up on Earth.  Hooters, Purply, and Redhead are approached by cops and they are asking about Snow White.  She pulls up in a sick Fast and Furious style car.  Between the cops and Red Riding Hood, these bitches keep calling everyone a peasant or a commoner.  Apparently, having what they refer to as, no fucking shit, “Princess Powers” really ups your count of cunt quotient.  These broads are like the popular chicks in high school.  Great to look at, but you really would rather punch them after you finish the angry sex with them.

The girls all get the lay of the land they are in.  Red Riding Hood runs afoul of some trouble with some bad guys and kicks their asses.  Snow White tells the other three (I still do not know who they are) about how Rumpelfucknugget has taken over Los Angeles.  Mind you the way this actress playing Snow White, Lauren Parkinson, speaks her lines…  It’s a new level of bad.  She adds extra pauses, she is trying some sort of pseudo-accent.  It’s made even worse because she narrates so much exposition.  So much exposition that I can sum up, what took her several minutes, in one sentence: Rumpelnuts is building a new army of enslaved people to take over the world.

I really don’t know who to root for in this movie.  I’m not even really sure what is happening.  Some guy has taken Red Riding Hood captive.  The Princesses are all looking for her.  The Princesses are supposedly here to save everyone, but holy shit they are unlikable.  Snow White is okay with the idea of the saving Earth, but the other three seem pretty put out by having to do anything to help and just want to go home.  They make bitchy comments about Red Riding Hood.  They treat everyone like they are beneath them.  I hate them.  Really.  I hate them.  I guess Red Riding Hood is okay.  She’s taking revenge for her family being killed.  I like Lou Ferrigno, but I mostly just feel sorry for him to being in this movie.  I don’t know what he really is though.  Everyone is chewing so much scenery I don’t know how there is anything left for these people to use as sets.

I think I am kinda starting to understand this turd…  So, Red Riding Hood has a fragment of Snow White’s super special mirror that helped bring them here through the portal.  That fragment of the mirror is important to Rumpelstiltedperformance for some reason.  Three of the four Princesses don’t care about Red Riding Hood and wants to just stop Rumpelfart, and go home.

So that’s the “plot” and I really use that term loosely because it’s a primarily a series of action scenes between hot girls who talk tough and use their Princess Powers and stupid guys.   I’m also starting to figure out that Redhead is Rapunzel, Hooter Waitress is Sleeping Beauty (her power might be that she can put people to sleep, but I don’t know for sure because they only had her use her powers like once every 30 seconds), and Purply Hair is…?  Cinderella?  I guess.  Whatever.

The best line of the movie, though, is when Cinderella and Red Riding Hood are having a heart to heart chat about the war in their home land and everything that happened and why Red Riding Hood hates the Royals and Princesses.  Cinderella says, “We aren’t heroes.  We are Avengers.” like it was some big moment to rally around.  It wasn’t.  It was fucking terrible.

Anyway, they are attacked by a transformed Lou Ferrigno (his name was something like Iron John or something and now he’s made of iron) and Rapunzel is taken hostage.  Red Riding Hood goes after her while the other three Princesses make off with the mirror fragment.  Red Riding Hood, again, gets herself captured.  The other three Princesses, go to this shit shack to make a plan and there are a bunch of REALLY terrible close up shots of real tense talk.  Eventually Cinderella and Snow White make their way into the Mayor’s office where Rumplyface lives.

Unfortunately, Rumpeltits has taken control of Red Riding Hood and she gets the shard of the mirror.  Show White gives a rousing sentence about how it’s the day to save everything and then makes a comment about hoping their new friend on the inside (a charming, THE charming character, girl named Jessica) will be able to help them in a really bitchy way.  Things start to go south when Rumps opens the portal and all his enslaved soldiers come through from the Fairy Tale land.  The Princesses do a real cool action thing by walking toward City Hall all in slow motion as the music swells.  Oh!  Here’s a screenshot…

Almost as awesome as when the real Avengers first assembled, right?  Anyway, when the enslaved Red Riding Hood tries to shoot an arrow at Snow White, our main hero calls the poor girl, who is actually trying to have a character arc and is caught up in all this by no fault of anyone but Snow White’s, a “bitch”.   Our supposed hero calls the almost likable character a bitch.  Congratulations movie, you managed to make the most unlikable hero character in any action movie the worst human being to ever exist.

So now we have Red Riding Hood, you know, the “bitch” who is basically the bane of our “hero’s” life, fighting Cinderella.  And we have Snow White captured by Rumpystumpump who wants her to cut a deal with him to live and give him her kingdom but marry him.  Rapunzel convinces Lou Ferrigno to close the portal by sacrificing himself.  Sleeping Beauty gets tossed around like a San Antonio Hooters ragdoll by this henchman known as The Wolf (Red Riding Hood’s arch enemy).  Red Riding Hood is freed of Rummy’s spell and they all take on Rums.  Snow White impales herself to stab Rumbum, and to finish him off, Sleeping Beauty smashes the shard to close the portal.  Snow White dies (yay!), and all the others realize they are trapped on Earth.  The girls decide to protect Earth until they can find a way home.  Then right before the credits, Snow White wakes up!  OH MY GOD!

I fucking hated this movie.  I understand you wanna have some action movies for girls.  Yes.  That is all well and good.  What you don’t want, whatsoever, is to have The Asylum to be the ones in charge of giving you these movies.  Let me try to explain exactly why you don’t want this the best way I can…

Every guy wants to see a girl dressed in leather and kicking ass.  It gets things in guys’ loins really a-churnin’.  Despite what a comment section on the Return of Kings site says, we guys like the idea of a woman who can really do some action hero shit.  We also like the idea of girls playing characters.  You know, like roleplay.  We DIG that shit.  We kinda like the idea of magical ladies who have powers and that sort of stuff too!  On the surface, we like everything this movie is offering.

BUT.  There’s what we like and fantasize about and then there’s execution.  First, the script needs to be sharp and provide us well rounded characters who have thoughts and feelings and ideas.  Writer/Director Jeremy Inman doesn’t know how to write a real woman.  Instead, the ideas and thoughts and feelings were all about the girls being real bitchy about each other.  I pretty much covered that in the dozen or so previous paragraphs.  But then you are working for The Asylum.  That means you aren’t bringing a Scarlett Johansson or an Evangeline Lilly to the table here.  No.  You’re going to the San Antonio Hooters to get the girl on the left and you’re hiring your buddy’s girlfriend who you know has the looks but when you tell her to be a bad ass, everything that comes out of her mouth is dripping with so much bitchiness you want to hop into the movie and kick her in the box.  Then, punch her in the tits.  These are pretty girls.  Everyone wants to see them be actiony and stuff. We want this.  Us guys NEED this.  But we can’t care if we really don’t like the girls.

When you undercut your tough, ass kicking chicks with bad dialog and poor direction that makes everything they say seem just utterly unlikable, it’s kinda like only wanting to date a girl to see what she wears when you go out, but hating every conversation you have with her.