Angelina Jolie, Elle Fanning, Sharlto Copley, Sam Riley, Imelda Staunton, Leslie Manville, Juno Temple
Screenplay by Linda Woolverton
Directed by Robert Stromberg
Nobody can create magic like Disney. And nobody can detract from that magic like they can, either.
The '90's barrage of dreadful straight to video sequels that continued into the early 2000's was suuposed to be killed when John Lassiter took over as head of animation: in fact, he specifically stated that one of the major reasons he took the job was to protect PIXAR classics from such a fate. Unfortunately, Lassiter has become a full blown Disney exec and embraced the "don't let other people ruin our stuff when we can do it ourselves" mentality. Cars 2 was PIXAR's first film to genuinely receive bad reviews, and PIXAR has shifted over to sequelizing most of its movies. Yes, Cars 2 and Monsters University were better than Aladdin: The Return of Jafar. But they weren't up to standard of the originals. And while Disney still puts out some classics (Frozen ranks among their best features), it's hard to shake the feeling that they will beat it into the ground someday.
The latest half-hearted "money before art" piece the studio has given us is Maleficent. According to press releases, Maleficent "explores the untold story of Disney's most iconic villain from the 1959 classic Sleeping Beauty, and the elements of her betrayal that ultimately turned her pure heart to stone." That's a nice way of saying it throws out the original story in favoring of a cheesy and very clunky glorified TV special that clearly has no real idea behind it beyond the casting of its lead.
The young Maleficent is a preteen fairy that lives in "the moors" (even though the card says "the moops"), a magical fairyland that is basically a hybrid of Disney's straight to video Tinker Bell series and Avatar. One day Maleficent meets a young boy named Stephan and falls deeply in love. Their romance blossoms until they get older, at which point Stephan becomes a Republican and moves away to seek public office. Maleficient grows older and skinnier until she finds herself played by Angelina Jolie, and gets into a skirmish with the local king, who is trying to take over the moors (not the moops.).
Meanwhile, the ever ambitions Stephan (now played by Sharlto Copely of (The A-Team and District 9) hears the king say that, having no heir to the throne he will make whoever kills Maleficent the next king. Stephan goes back out to the moops (the moors) to see Maleficent, who is delighted to rekindle their romance. Unfortunately, Stephan has other plans, and as she sleeps, he tries to stab her in the heart, but can not go through with it. Instead, he cuts off her wings using a chain of steel (steel is apparently fairy kryptonite.). Maleficent awakens to find both Stephan and her wings gone. Yes, that's right, SHE SLEEPS THROUGH GETTING HER WINGS CUT OFF.
Driven by revenge, places an irrevocable curse upon the human king's newborn infant Aurora. As the child grows, Aurora (Elle Fanning) is doomed to walk through a boring movie until she turns 16 yadda yadda death yadda yadda spinning wheel.
This is about as lazy an idea for a movie as I have seen in quite some time, and honestly the most intriguing aspect of it is the uncomfortable feeling that between the cutting off the wings off and and the whole idea of kissing girls while they are asleep that this movies sees the story of Sleeping Beauty as a metaphor for date rape. Stephan is turned into a pretty despicable character, and while I'm all for making royalty look bad, he's simply not iteresting, and neither is Maleficent. Jolie gives an entertaining performance, but the character's rather meager motivation simply doesn't play. In general, the characters are dull and the script never delves beneath the surface, and the sense of pacing is downright awful: far too much time is spent on setting up the shallow, uninteresting "woman scorned" story between Stephan and Maleficent, while the relationship between Maleficent and Aurora, which is supposed to be what the movie is about, feels extremely rushed. The three fairies who raise Aurora are played as dimwitted and ineffectual, and for some reason their names have been changed (perhaps Disney is so famously letigious that they were afraid they might sue themselves, and honestly, they should have.).
First time director Stromberg (who until know has worked as a visual effects artist) is right at home with pretty visuals but hasn't the foggiest idea what to do with actors, even good ones, and it seems pretty clear by this point that writer Linda Woolverton (Beauty and the Beast) is a one hit wonder and we should stop acting like her presence is anything special. Maleficent seems want to pass itself off as a feminist fairy tale, but in the end we have a lead character her turns evil when she is rejected by the cute boy and turns good again when her maternal instincts kick in.
A great deal of effort has been put into visually mimicking the original classic. It's a shame that same sense of detail was not put into telling a good story.
Maleficent is Rated PG for violence and peril.
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