If you have seen or have any love for Disney's 1959 animated classic, Sleeping Beauty, then you know who Maleficent is. She is the villain of that animated film, the Mistress of All Evil, a sorceress that no one would ever dare to cross, and arguably Disney's greatest villain. Now this film, Maleficent, starring Angelina Jolie, has been released, focusing on the Sleeping Beauty story from the perspective of the villain. Or at least I think they were trying to make her a villain in this film. Never mind, they never tried to make her a villain at all. And that is only the start of the various problems with this film.
One of the film's troubles is handling their character development, as well as their representation. Princess Aurora, here played by Elle Fanning, is still as boring an uninteresting as she was in the original film. Though I love the original film, ironically the princess lead is one of its main flaws for me, and here she is no different. But to Elle Fanning's credit, she does not do a terrible job. She at least tries with her performance to give us an interesting character, even though she is given little to nothing to work with. Sharlto Copley plays King Stefan, Aurora's father and the supposed villain of the film. To be honest, I never liked Copley as an actor. To be probably specific, I never liked the characters he has chosen to play, starting with District 9. I am still not sure whether its his performance, the way his characters are written, or both. But all the characters he has played are unlikable and an annoyance, and Stefan is not an exception. The character himself starts interesting because of his history with the Maleficent character. But later on the film decides for him to be one-dimensional. The three fairies that are assigned to take care of the child Aurora, Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather, or as this film names them Knotgrass, Thistlewit, and Flittle, because those names are surely more memorable, are poorly represented in this film. Here are what I like to call "The Three Stooges Ladies". They are just their to perform cheap and unfunny slapstick and to be a bunch of bumbling buffoons. If you have seen or have great appreciation for the first film, you know that these three fairies were the heart of the film as yes they were comedic and a bit clumsy, they were still all together caring, courageous, and welcoming characters. They are highly disgracefully misrepresented. I maybe taking this a little too seriously, but if you are a huge fan of the original film just as I am, you will most likely be offended. The only character I liked in this whole film was Maleficent's shape-shifting servant, Diaval. That is because the actor turned out to be quite entertaining. Then we come to Maleficent herself, played by Angelina Jolie. Everybody has been saying that her performance is the absolute best part of the film. But to be honest, I do not even think she is that great. She was not horrible, but she was not anything to get crazy about at the same, in my opinion anyway. There was nothing really new or special for me that she brought to the table. I just only saw her as Angelina Jolie not Maleficent. She did not disappear in the role like I was expecting her to.
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I feel that the trailers really lied to me about what I was getting. I thought I was going to get this really intriguing, dark, and fascinating story about one of Disney's most famous villains. But instead I felt like I got the story as if it were told by Nick Jr. Not only was the tone kid friendly, it was really kid friendly, nothing harmful or challenging for younger viewers. I do not mind targeting for children, but I did not think the tone was going to be so light that it was okay for four year olds. You can make a dark story for children, at least for ages nine and up. But if the movie wanted a children audience, it still should have been a smarter, more challenging, and more fresh way to approach this story. Not reduce it to kindergarten story time! When you hear about a studio making a film about a villain character, you expect something dark and quite fascinating. But so many plot elements from the original story are unnecessarily changed, to a point where they make absolutely no sense. I keep hearing praise about how this film is a "fresh" take on a familiar story, where every little plot element added is totally predictable as well as sappy. The visual effects, another element about this film that is constantly getting praised, in my opinion are not that great either. A lot of it is CGI of course, most blockbusters nowadays we expect some CGI. But I'm sorry, the CGI looks unbelievably fake! Some of the background setting may look impressive, but on things like the creatures and the fairies, they are totally fake as well as obvious. Most of them are used on these mythical creatures that look like they belong on a preschool cartoon. I know it is a Disney movie, but I mean seriously I've seen Disney take serious risks in the past, and to be honest some of those risks I think were worth it and at least made some of their darker films more memorable. I guess I should not be too mean to it, because maybe if you remove the fact that this film is based of an already pre-existing film and character, it can make out to be an "OK" family fantasy film. But for someone who is a fan of the original film and believe that its villain is probably one of the best villains in cinema history, and to see a film like this try to connect with it, it greatly disappoints me.
GRADE: CR
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