ravenlynne wrote:
>
> http://www.scifi.com/harpies/
>
> The description at rlslog.net reads:
>
> "Stephen Baldwin and Kristin Richardson star in this fantasy tale about
> a museum security guard who is trans****ted into the past, where he must
> battle monsters controlled by an evil sorcerer"
>
> Interesting.
>
Here's review that seems to be funnier than the movie from
http://foywonder.livejournal.com/87915.html
:
Jason Avery is an ex-cop now working as a museum security guard. Armed
thieves break in intent on stealing a priceless obelisk that looks like
a glowing crystal dinosaur egg that's stored within this vault-like
stone structure that looks like someone merged a Tardis with the
Stargate. The scientist/anthropologist/whatever behind the theft talks
of the obelisk giving him the power to control harpies, demonic winged
female monsters of classic mythology. Through a series of contrived
events, the obelisk opens a time ****tal that Jason promptly falls into,
crash landing over a thousand years in the past in a land threatened by
evil harpies. Initially only concerned with getting home, Jason gets
roped into having to save the villagers, all of whom proclaim him to be
this great "harpy slayer" that prophecy says would one day come to save
the kingdom. A lot of hullabaloo involves this gold amulet and a mortal
villain seeking to gain control of the obelisk in order to hatch a harpy
army for him to command and conquer with. If you've ever seen ARMY OF
DARKNESS then you can pretty much fill in the rest of the blanks.
In fact, if you've ever seen ARMY OF DARKNESS then you have absolutely
no reason whatsoever to ever watch STAN LEE'S HARPIES. Even if you
haven't seen ARMY OF DARKNESS there's really no reason whatsoever to
ever watch STAN LEE'S HARPIES.
Any similarities between STAN LEE'S HARPIES and ARMY OF DARKNESS are not
a coincidence - especially since the director is a long-time cohort of
Sam Raimi's. Any similarities between STAN LEE'S HARPIES and a good
movie are non-existent. Sometimes a movie is so bad it's good and
sometimes a movie is so bad it's just plain bad. STAN LEE'S HARPIES is
just plain bad - not even laughably so. This is a movie that you can
tell exactly what they were trying to do and still watch them fail
pitifully every step of the way. How pitiful does it get? So pitiful
that I began feeling bad for pretty much everyone involved with this
film's creation. Poor quality CGI, impoverished production values,
uniformly bad acting, and a clichéd script: all the stuff you expect
from a Sci-Fi Channel original but this time with an extra added layer
of embarrassment. There were scenes so poorly staged that it was
cringe-inducing to watch.
And for a movie called HARPIES there sure weren't that many harpies
filling the screen. Every so often a woman in a cheap nightgown with
frizzy hair, fangs, too much eye shadow, fake-looking wings, and with a
propensity for squatting and making squeaky snarls that sound like a
mogwai in heat takes the screen (or their animated computer effects
double does) to look appallingly stupid, flap their phony wings, and
slash someone up with their claws. As pathetic looking and utterly
devoid of personality as the harpies are, they're still what the movie
is titled after and deserved more screen time that they're given. Heck,
I'd take the stupid harpies over the boring villain named Bor-something
(maybe it was boring) and his quest to unleash a harpy horde of which
the bulk of the plot is devoted to.
Even if every other aspect of STAN LEE'S HARPIES wasn't an unmitigated
failure, the film would still be doomed by the Stephen Baldwin factor.
The man is no Bruce Campbell, that's damn sure. Few people are. But this
is a film that's trying to make Stephen Baldwin into Ash-lite and
Baldwin just does not have the sardonic charisma to pull it off.
Campbell's Ash was a self-absorbed nincompoop who still managed to do
develop some courage and defeat the Deadites in battle while di****ng out
sarcastic one-liners. Baldwin's Jason Avery is just a guy taking things
way too seriously much of the time given the film's tone and there's no
zip, no punch, nothing to Baldwin's line delivery, not that the quips he
spouts off are all that witty to begin with. What counts as clever here
is having Jason say "nifty" in the same manner which Ash said "groovy"
only without anything resembling personality in his voice. Stephen
Baldwin gives a thoroughly disinterested performance that reeks of the
producers' having paid him enough to show up and act but not enough to
act like he could give a ****.
I didn't crack a smile once outside of a slightly amusing gag involving
the difficulties of firing a catapult. Aside from that one brief moment
there's not a damn thing that works in the slightest. TV shows like
"Hercules: The Legendary Journeys" and "Xena, Warrior Princess" (which
the maker of this film even directed episodes of) did a vastly superior
job mixing mythology, campy humor, and action like this one a weekly
basis. It's painfully obvious the movie they were trying to make was
more ambitious than the Sci-Fi Channel budget would allow, evidenced by
the sparse cast clad in Renaissance Fair attire; though that's something
of an amazing statement to make given this really didn't appear to be
all that ambitious a film, evidenced by how little action there is with
more dull skulking about the forest and time wasted on the romance
between Baldwin and a local blonde babe than on the actual
harpy-fighting which last time I checked was supposed to be the whole
point of the film. Even the ARMY OF DARKNESS finale with Baldwin
battling the final harpy inside the museum in present time is a dead
zone of imagination.
Exactly what Stan Lee had to do with the creation of this movie is
anyone's guess. His name is clearly being used to market it even though
the "STAN LEE'S" part of the title is notably missing from the opening
title sequence. All I know for certain is that STAN LEE'S HARPIES is the
second Sci-Fi Channel original movie with Stan Lee's name before the
title (the first being STAN LEE'S LIGHTSPEED from last year - REVIEW
HERE), both of which now share the distinction of being amongst the
worst original movies the Sci-Fi Channel has ever produced. I'm thinking
Mr. Excelsior should just stick to comic books.
--
-Gina in Italy
All hail the pizza lord!
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