Maleficent
Opens Friday at Park and Scotiabank
Fairy tales are easy pickings for reboots: we already know the villains, can recite their best lines, but we have no idea what makes them tick. Did the kids at school tease Ursula about her weight? Did Cinderella’s stepmother come from a trailer park before moving into the castle?
If you don’t want a twist on the traditional tale, don’t see the film. And avoid producer Joe Roth’s other fairy-tale remakes: Oz the Great and Powerful, Snow White and the Huntsman, Alice in Wonderland. Because while some things are the same as the beloved 1959 Disney classic Sleeping Beauty — a whole scene is almost word for word — there’s a lot to rankle traditionalists.
Angelina Jolie plays Maleficent, the villainess who crashes Princess Aurora’s christening and curses the infant to an eternal sleep once she reaches her 16th birthday. The kingdoms were already divided before the baby came: Maleficent lives in a magical fairy kingdom in the moors, while Aurora is born into a dynasty intent on exploiting the fairy lands for their mythical wealth.
Battles ensue, rewards are offered. It proves irresistible to raised-in-a-barn Stefan (Sharlto Copley), an orphan who ventured into the moors as a boy and fell in love with Maleficent. He turns on his fairy love and clips her wings, returning with the trophies to the dying king, who quickly gives Stefan the keys to the kingdom. So it’s a classic love-and-revenge-tale, right?
Not quite. The three fairies charged with hiding Aurora from Maleficent (Imelda Staunton, Juno Temple, Lesley Manville) prove to be highly incompetent caregivers, forcing Maleficent to take on a mothering role, of sorts. (How confused is Vivienne Jolie-Pitt, by the way? She plays Aurora at age five and mommy keeps calling her a “beastie” and telling her to go away.) She and Diaval (Sam Riley), Maleficent’s raven sidekick, keep Aurora from going hungry and falling off cliffs. Maleficent starts to regret her curse.
Even in 3D, the effects, while magical in scope, are not quite as consistent as they ought to be. The tree battle is an effects highlight but feels like an aside that was given too much weight. Ditto a later skirmish where Maleficent tosses soldiers around like a kid shaking her piggy bank. And this while other vital bonding scenes between Maleficent and Aurora (Elle Fanning) are rushed.
If the whole idea is to give Maleficent a backstory, linger there. Scenes of the formative years that turned Maleficent from guardian of the moors to maimed revenge-seeker are too brief, with a voiceover hastening things along. Speaking of haste: Aurora has the shortest sleep ever! This is Sleeping Beauty, not Power-Nap Princess.
This is the first time directing for Robert Stromberg, an art direction Oscar winner (Alice In Wonderland, Avatar). His is a fair film made decent by Jolie’s presence: like a porcelain, reality-TV Mob Wife, Jolie and her prosthetic cheekbones dominate every scene, as do her exquisite costumes. But it’s the gusto with which Jolie attacks each line, the study the actor has put into every cackle, every silhouette, that makes the film about more than the effects.
