First of all, I refuse to use the term SyFy. They may be all excited and happy with the name change, I just think it’s dumb. Almost as dumb as someone spending their Saturday night watching three movies in a row on said poorly named cable station. But, I did, and so we have some stuff to get through.
“Beyond Sherwood Forest” (2009)
For starters you get your typical Robin Hood stuff, King Richard is off somewhere and his inept brother Prince John (David Richman Peck) has been left in charge. This time John has come up with the idea of allying himself with the Danes by offering up Maid Marian (Erica Durance) in marriage. The, as always, evil Sheriff of Nottingham (Julian Sands), has found a new way to pacify Robin Hood (Robin Dunne). A half breed human and Sylvan girl, Alina, is cursed to transform into a ferocious dragon. The Sheriff has her heart and controls her to do his bidding.
This film ended up being the highlight of the evening. Now don’t stop reading because you want to see it, you don’t. It was the highlight of a rather painful evening. If the other movies were cancer and aids, this one is cholera. Not as bad as the others, but still not something you want to actively seek out.
Maybe I am being a bit too harsh on this one. It wasn’t awful. It was right about what one would expect from a simple 2nd tier fantasy film. I need to keep that in mind more often. Not everything can be as grand and magical as “Willow”. My biggest problem was the dragon aspect. I give them praise for trying something new with the Robin Hood story, but they unfortunately failed to deliver a compelling enough story. The dragon almost seemed secondary.
The dragon also looked pretty awful. Again, these films don’t have the budget to bring in someone like Weta do to the CG. I get that, but if it is gonna look this bad try something else. Bad CG is just atrocious, Ray Harrhausen did better effects 40 years ago with stop motion.
I will say that the acting was above average for a film of this caliber. Everyone seemed to at least have taken one acting class. No one really stands out as great, but no one sticks out as awful either. It just seems to me that so much more could have been done to make this story a little better. The whole Sylvan aspect just seemed tacked on, which made me not really care about it. Maybe I am just burned out on the whole bad run of Robin Hood films, 2 Axes.
Moving on…
“Beauty and the Beasts” (2009)
So, sticking with familiar stories we now have a retelling of Beauty and the Beast. We have Belle (Estella Warren) and we have a beast (Victor Parascos). But, this time we also have an evil troll conjured up by the equally evil Lady Helen (Vanessa Gray). In her efforts to get Count Rudolph (Rhett Giles) made the new king, Helen hopes to use the troll to frame the poor beast as a murderous savage.
And, now we go down a few steps from the last movie. The biggest star here are Estella Warren’s tits. They are about the only thing worth watching in this turd. it isn’t so much that the story is bad, it is more that everything else is really terrible. The acting is horrendous, their really isn’t anyone redeemable in the cast. So many utterly ridiculous things happen that it becomes laughable at first, and then quickly moves on the tiresome, then to annoyance. A dozen guys fire arrows into an open window in the hopes of killing the beast. Of course they miss and kill the soldier that was sent in to the building instead. Now, I saw this coming from a mile away, but when his arrow riddled body appears I almost choked on my diet Fanta. Every arrow hit this one guy, all in the chest too.
But, there are bouncing boobies to watch. Of course I have the internet for that. So, why did I watch this again? Oh right, to save you all the trouble, because I know many of you were aching to see this. Again, don’t. 1 Axe, it would be higher but I can see boobs in Maxim.
And finally…
“Merlin and the War of the Dragons” (2008)
To wrap up our old stories retold poorly, here we have a young Merlin (Simon Lloyd-Roberts) being trained as a wizard by the Mage (Jurgen Prochnow). There is another student though and he gets all evil and starts turning people into dragons and waging war against the Britons.
Jurgen, Jurgen, Jurgen. Things must be bad. To have come from such greatness as “Das Boot” to this. At the very least the acting in this one is slightly better than that of a pair of breasts, but not much better. If this tale tells me anything it is that Merlin was too stupid to have lived long enough to ever be of use to King Arthur. I did get to see a wonderfully motivating speech that was so obviously a rip-off from “Braveheart” being given to an army of about 9 guys. Seriously, you couldn’t find a few more Rennies to be in your movie? I just can’t believe I stayed up until 4am watching this. Again it seems I will never learn, 1 Axe.