Royal Jelly

source: Royal Jelly

Man this movie was hot garbage. Really stuck thru to see the ending but wow me and my gf pissed ourselves laughing when we saw Asters transformation. She suddenly out of the blue mid scene has these plastic cling-wrap wings on her shoulders. The wings are completely crooked and very lazy looking, like something your mom created the day of on Halloween because the store is sold out of costumes. MINT. In one scene one of the women with the vampire fangs only had a single fang which looked really stupid. Several times near the end we where like yelling at the tv telling the poor girl there was so many opportunities to leave that farm hahah. Anyways do yourself a favor honey. Remove it from your watch list.

"Actors are like cattle" Hitchcock once famously said; they really have no idea how a flick will turn out when they're filming. As such, I won't blame them. However the writer/director should be banned from ever ATTEMPTING to make another flick. The idea is an interesting one, but torpedoed by the one-dimensional cliche' of the social/family outcast, delivered with such sledgehammer exaggeration in the first 15 minutes that the rest of the flick is poisoned. AVOID if you want to be entertained or at all value your time.

Very interesting premise, but the script didn't quite work for me. First, the the evil step-family was over the top. Like, they're really didn't give her food at dinner and dad was ok? Aaaaaand she had to scrub the soiled bed???? LOL. The meanies from school got away with bullying the main character, then, her "fairy godmother" turned out be even more evil. Huh. Lol Not to mention, how long was she at the house because it seemed like 2 days. They could have skipped the 1 minute love scene and added more dialogue. Also, I think there was a bit too many music montages. Overall, I was thinking the main character would be groomed, then get pay back or a better outlook on life.

I watched the first five minutes and went on to something else, saving it for a later time. I couldn't sleep last night so i turned it on and watched it half-asleep, and it was STILL bad. Lol the script was terrible, most of the acting was high school play level, the dead teacher didn't make any sense unless queen bee went and killed him so she could meet aster (which is possible to move the plot along but still dumb). I know it was supposed to represent a human bee hive. But it wasn't executed properly. At the end, i couldn't even tell if they were supposed to be bees or vampires with .99 fake fangs. The make-up was terrible, a lot was left unexplained, just waste of time. I wasn't sleeping anyway so it was a wash.

At least INVASION OF THE BEE GIRLS (1973) had a camp thing going on. ROYAL JELLY takes itself way too seriously and the less than stellar acting brings it to a buzz-less crash. Tedious pace and beyond predictable.

Royal Jelly Written and directed by Sean Riley Bumblebees, honey bees, bees of all types infect every section of this movie. Her late mother was a beekeeper and loved the creatures so she found herself drawn to them as well. She is an outcast and a loner. A mysterious substitute teacher comes into town and Aster(a bee loving lonely girl) and this adult steal off into the night, no questions asked. This lady is not what she seems. She appears to be grooming Aster for something important and it is something that has to do with bees. This is a movie that starts out going in the direction of a teenage revenge film like Carrie. It is a bit of a bait and switch that goes on once the lady of the bee manor sweeps Aster off of her feet. We begin to encroach with bits of body horror and honestly this was the most fascinating aspect of the movie. It doesn't have enough of a special makeup effects budget to really dig beneath this horror and prey upon what it might be like. It does dwell on the more grotesque elements of the insect world and especially bee queens. It leaves a bitter taste in your mouth because when you take it out of the insect world and apply it to unwilling human beings, it changes things. The movie also wants us to believe in Aster's relationship with the first boy, not the cartoon cowboy. It doesn't really give much in the way of character development. You get one romantic swoon under the moon. That's not enough to really believe in the dilemma being presented here. While I do admire the filmmaker trying something this off the wall, there's a lot that doesn't work. In order to even get to the house where Aster is being groomed for her queen bee duties, the story jumps through a bunch of hoops and ignores things that any rational person might ask themselves. There's a suspicious lack of law enforcement for a teenage runaway. Nobody seems to question what happened to Aster. Not her loving father or she demon stepmother. Nobody. There are several opportunities for Aster to read the red flags ever prevalent. She ignores them and even invents new excuses to stay in what is obviously especially once a cartoon cowboy shows up, is a very dangerous place. Where is her dad? Does nobody care that Aster just disappeared with an adult teacher? I had just too many questions and that fragile suspension of disbelief became frayed and eventually snapped in two, nor the twain should meet again. Royal Jelly does try. The camera work is strange in the fact that it is either super close up or shaking tremendously. I was confused by the style that Sean Riley was going for. The destruction of the hive by the bullies was beautifully shot and even went for a slow motion balletic tone. Not all was lost with this. It was just a missed opportunity. I give Royal Jelly a C.

I'm not even half way through this but one thing is annoying me; Aster has referred to Drew as her 'half sister' twice so far. To be half sisters the girls must share one parent. Since they are in the same class, Aster and Drew must be close to the same age. Aster clearly remembers her mother and her father speaks of missing her as if they were still together when the mother died. So did Aster's father cheat on her mother with the stepmom to conceive Drew? Or does the writer not understand the concept of half sister compared to step sister?

This "movie" is not only really difficult to understand, it was hard as hell to watch! Is this a creepy cult of beekeepers, or a creepy cult of honey secreting vampires? DON'T WASTE YOUR TIME!

I watch a lot of low-budget and no-budget movies, this sounded like it would be an interesting movie, and it is, but it seems a lot of people don't get what's going on, or think it's boring. A lot actually happens in this movie, but it is fairly underplayed. The beginning of the movie sets it up and explains exactly what is going on. I almost wish it went a little further in it's weirdness, and at the end it's very low-budget shows with some false teeth, the colors do not match the the actors teeth..... This is a literal representation of a honey bee hive, on a human scale, if that doesn't appeal to you, you probably shouldn't watch it. It is actually a really interesting movie, and I think people are not giving it a fair shake. If you can accept it's premise, I think there is a lot to enjoy, but it is a strange movie, one of the stranger ones I have seen recently, but I don't want to give too much away. It is a kind of dark fairytale/drama, and again, it may get confusing, but it is all explained at the very beginning, I recommend going back and watching the first few minutes. It moves slow, but pay attention and have some patience. The main theme throughout the movie is a really haunting piano piece, it actually reminds me a bit of the "Nightmare on Elm Street Theme", sadly the rest of the music is hit or miss. The cinematography is generally good, except there are a little of dark shots towards the end where it is a bit hard to tell what is going on. The acting from the lead is good, and the rest of the cast is good enough, the worst actors, thankfully have very small parts. The sound mixing is thankfully, well-done, nothing is seriously out of balance. It has a pretty classic fairlytale set-up, and I think it definitely keeps that feel throughout the movie, don't expect the plot to make real world sense, it isn't supposed to and it is meant to be surreal, so don't take things so literally. I think for what it aims to achieve, it has a fairly cohesive plot. If you accept its weird dark fairytale beehive premise you'll at least be entertained, if you don't, you will definitely not enjoy this movie.