Maleficent Reviews/Discussion (2 Viewers)

The film shines its spotlight firmly on Maleficent, with the intent of making her a more relatable and empathetic character. And, to that end, Jolie is magnetic, commanding the audience's full attention from the get-go. Though she emulates her animated counterpart by playing the role with a healthy dose of stone-faced stoicism, her performance also succeeds in offering fleeting glimpses of the sorrow and compassion within her character's heart. But despite the push to convince audiences of Maleficent's softer side, what proves most enjoyable is watching Jolie chew the scenery in those small moments where Maleficent revels in her own delicious brand of venom and wry humor.

The rest of the film just seems to fall into place around her, though some pieces fit better than others. Stromberg (whose previous credits include production design on Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland and Sam Raimi's Oz the Great and Powerful) is no stranger to Disney reimaginings, and here he conjures up a fantasy world full of suitably amusing creature designs and whiz-bang special effects. The post-converted 3D is pleasing to the eye (especially when the camera swoops through the Moors), and there are many visual references that harken back to Sleeping Beauty (not the least of which is Maleficent's costume, which hews closely to legendary Disney animator Marc Davis' original, iconic design).

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Tim Glover said:

Underused really....this was Jolie's film. Fanning was effective and has a very sweet smile though.

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MatthewA said:

From the studio that gave you John Carter and The Lone Ranger...

I went with three friends. None of us were impressed, and we had high hopes that at least Angelina Jolie's performance would make it worth sitting through. But the movie was only part of the problem. The theater was another problem.

We bought tickets for the 3D presentation, hoping it would at least meet baseline technical standards of me being able to see what was going on. I couldn't. It was a dark, blurry mess; faces were impossible to read and the 3D effect itself was negligible at best. I talked to an usher and asked why it was so dark; they said they'd fix it. I even went to the manager to complain, and they said nothing was wrong and it was supposed to be that way because it's 3D. They gave me all kinds of excuses before they finally switched my tickets to the 2D version that happened to be just starting. The 2D picture was bright and clear enough to see that this movie was just plain lousy.

Part of the problem with adapting Sleeping Beauty for the screen is that the original story wasn't the most plot-heavy source material for a feature film. Tchaikovsky's ballet, one of the sources used for the 1959 animated classic, runs five hours long, but without the ballet, Walt Disney himself could only get 75 minutes out of it, and that's all it really needs. But it is visual and aural poetry in motion, and the last truly innovative film Walt made. This 97-minute faux epic was the dreariest, most muddled film I've seen in years.

This supposedly cost $200 million; where did the money go? Certainly not into making the film look nice. Visually, there is nothing to distinguish this from Snow White and the Huntsman or any of these other bloated CGI extravaganzas. The daytime scenes are curiously ugly and horribly blown-out like a slightly overexposed snapshot.

The money certainly didn't buy a better script, and there, as in the majority of blockbusters that promise more than they deliver, is the film's biggest problem. The characters are so underdeveloped, it's virtually impossible to care about any of them. The three fairies are now more hindrance than help (and the wonderful pink vs. blue war from the original is gone), and their antics would have been more appropriate for the Sanderson Sisters from Hocus Pocus. Even the Prince was bland, bland, bland and he was barely there. And as for Maleficent following Aurora around for her whole life, why? So she could talk about how she hates children? The script gives us no indication as to why that is, yet they'll bend over backwards to try and find a reason for why she wasn't invited to Aurora's christening. I also could have lived without the narration as well. Narration only works when it's not being used to patch holes in the plot, and sadly, that seems to be the case here. I can't believe the same woman who wrote the screenplay to Beauty and the Beast also wrote this. Where's Howard Ashman when we really need him?

In the title role, Angelina delivers the requisite sneers, stares and snarls, and her delivery of the curse is to die for, but with the possible exception of Imelda Staunton as Knotgrass and Sharlto Copley as King Stefan, none of the supporting cast members were anywhere near passable.

The perfect topper for this grandiose sub-mediocre film is the end credits, where Lana Del Rey croaks out "Once Upon A Dream," the only trace of Tchaikovsky left among James Newton Howard's generically bombastic score. Even that once glorious melody now sounds like dreary atonal droning against the most funereal backing track you can imagine. She's no Mary Costa, and that's putting it mildly. I couldn't hear a single note that didn't sound like its pitch hadn't been altered by Melodyne.

With this film, I am officially tired of these faux-Wicked "villains were just misunderstood" things in the absence of an actual film version of Wicked, as if hearing their side of the story somehow justifies their actions. Where will it end? Making Maleficent

Spoiler

King Stefan's jilted ex-lover

does not make one want to empathize with her plight. In fact, it just makes her stupid, irrational and vindictive. The ending is so ludicrous I'm not even bothering with spoilers. There is a good story to be told from Maleficent's perspective, but this isn't it.

For what I paid for these tickets, I could have rented all five Herbie the Love Bug movies on VUDU and still had money to spare for Merlin Jones and Dexter Riley. I'm also tired of generic-looking CGI that makes every movie that uses it look like a video game you can't play. If they don't care that these films are cinematic eyesores, they might as well bring back the old sodium vapor process.

2/5

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