Think you know the story of Sleeping Beauty
and her tormentor Maleficent? You might know a version
of the story, but not the real story because as my man William
Wallace said in that movie 'Braveheart', history is written by
the victors. But if that were true, and if this story
went down the way the movie says it went down, that would mean
that the history that we are familiar with was actually
written by the losers. That doesn't make any sense, now
does it? We will just ignore all of that nonsense and
enjoy 90 or so minutes of a great Angelina Jolie, great CGI by
abused CGI artists and a bunch of other stuff, some of it
really scary, in Disney's retelling of Sleeping Beauty…
'Maleficent'.
Some old lady (Janet McTeer) narrates about the two lands, one
where we human types live and live miserably, as it is simply
our disposition, and the other where the moors live in a land
of fantasy, magic and happiness. In this land there is a
young faerie named Maleficent and she is the sweetest girl you
would ever want to see, despite her horns and demon
wings. One day Maleficent meets a human named Stefan,
and they would become friends. Now these two met while
Stefan was trying to steal something, which should've been a
hint, then he mentioned how he was poor and was going to be
king one day, which should've been a second hint as to this
dudes character, but these two would fall in love until
circumstance and Stefan's ambition drew them apart.
Eventually Maleficent would grow to be queen of this land, but
unfortunately, as humans tend to do, we have determined this
land has stuff we need and we are going to take it! The
king rally's his troops, but Maleficent and her army of
mystical creatures beats them down, and this king is mortally
wounded. But on his death bed, he says the man who can
bring death to Maleficent will inherit his kingdom and the
hand of his daughter. Stefan (Sharlto Copely) was in
that room on this day, and he took those words to heart.
Now without getting too much into the
details, Stefan reacquaints himself with Maleficent, gains her
trust, does something really bad to her and claims the
crown. He will also sire a daughter who will
unfortunately be on the receiving end of an awful curse by an
angry and vengeful Maleficent… you know, the whole sleeping
beauty, loves true kiss thing… causing the King to send baby
Aurora away to be raised in secret, away from the vengeful
Maleficent.
Well Maleficent, along with her trusty sidekick Daival the
crow (Sam Riley) know exactly where Aurora is, and in fact,
considering that idiots the king trusted to raising Aurora are
terrible at baby raising, if Maleficent weren't around to keep
an eye on her, she'd be dead already. Maleficent has to
keep her alive so her curse can take hold on her sixteenth
birthday, because where would be the fun in that.
Then the strangest thing happens. As Aurora (Elle
Fanning) grows, Maleficent becomes drawn to her. To the
point where she's kind of regretting the whole curse
thing. And Aurora is drawn to Maleficent in the kind of
love that can only be shared between a mother and child.
Ah, but then there's the curse, and it's a doozie. Not
to mention that King Stefan has completely lost his
mind. Totally Bonkers would be the word we would
use. But at the end of the day, it will still come down
to Love's True Kiss.
If one were to be critical about 'Maleficent', and believe me,
there are things one can criticize, one could say that a lot
of the story and characters are underdeveloped. We here
at the FCU are of the opinion that Sharlto Copely is an
awesome actor, but it seems everything was done here to
de-awesomize this poor man. Thus we have no basis as to
why a beautiful, full lipped, high cheekbone possessing,
glassy eyed faerie would be attracted to this clearly awful
person in the first place. The same could be said for
Princess Aurora who also didn't get much by way of development
to let us know, outside of a line or two, why she is so drawn
to this horned woman who seems to have nothing but disdain for
her very existence. I'm sure a lot of the scenes for
Stefan and Aurora are on some cutting room floor, since
'Maleficent' reeks of a film needing to be fixed and doctored
which might explain why the movie is so relatively brief,
almost rushed, and why the things we mainly did see were the
two things that ultimately made this film entertaining.
Those two things would be Angelina Jolie and jaw dropping
special effects. While the character development was
light, when Angelina Jolie is your lead, you just kind of hope
she can sell you with her own talent and hope she can drag the
other characters along, and she almost pulls this off.
Because Maleficent is so dominant, and magnetic, it makes
whatever shortcoming the other characters had almost
negligible. And whatever gaps Jolie couldn't fill, the
VFX unit and the wonderful, magical world they created took
care of the rest.
One thing though… the movie is pretty violent, all things
considered. When a movie starts and you see the Disney
castle and Tinkerbelle dropping the faerie dust, there's a
level of comfort that comes with that. At the theater I
was at, filled with little kids, I could see some genuine fear
in the children around me, first during the initial battle
with the humans, which was pretty darned brutal, then near the
finale in the castle when Maleficent was essentially being
tortured along with the giant dragon setting soldiers on
fire. Just something I think parents of younger children
should be aware of.
Regardless, when it's all said and done the majority of the
movie going public really doesn't care about things like
'character development' or 'incomplete scripting' or any of
that nonsense. That's stuff for critics to whine
about. These audiences want to have a good time at the
movies, and that's pretty much it. 'Maleficent', on the
strength of its star and its VFX magicians is a very good time
at the movies.
