Runtime: 1 hour, 37 minutes
Rating: PG
Director: Robert Stromberg
Quick Impressions:
I’ve been trying hard not to expect anything positive from this movie. On the one hand, how could Angelina Jolie not make a magnificent Maleficent? The casting is so perfect that it’s hard to believe no one made the movie before now. (In an interview on the Disney Channel, I heard Jolie say that she loved her horns so much she wanted to keep them, and I believe her.) And I’ve loved Elle Fanning since Super 8. She’s a fantastic young actress.
On top of that, Sleeping Beauty is literally my favorite Disney movie. For as long as I can remember, it’s been triumphantly atop my list of favorite animated features. With the music of Tchaikovsky and a meticulously hand-drawn world that looks like it might exist entirely within an illuminated capital in some medieval manuscript, the animated classic is an aesthetic delight. Plus Briar Rose/Aurora is so beautiful (with a lovely singing voice), Eleanor Audley’s Maleficent is so evil, those crazy Fairies keep house worse than I do, the jokes are constant, the danger is real, and the solution is perfect. I mean, who wouldn’t love to spend all day in the forest dancing around with adorable animals, then fall asleep only to discover on awakening that all your problems have been magically solved?
Sleeping Beauty also holds the distinction of being the first movie I saw in the theater (also my first VHS tape and first blu-ray). I was about fifteen months old when my parents took me to see it at the drive-in one July night. Apparently I was impressed. All my life my mother has loved to tell the story (faithfully recorded in my baby book) of how I gasped at Maleficent’s late-in-the-film metamorphosis and breathed in awe, “Ooooh! Dat dragon is baaaad!”
Let’s face it, that’s part of the draw of Sleeping Beauty. The world of the “good” people is so lovely on every level, and in stark contrast, the villain is so unequivocally evil. I mean, come on, her name is Maleficent! Thrillingly (for a children’s movie), she’s not just misguided or mischievous or disgruntled. She’s pure evil. She doesn’t even want to be good. She’s totally other, beyond the king’s control, outside the system, contemptuous of those who are not, and unabashedly evil. (In case anybody doesn’t get the point, she gets to deliver spine-tingling lines like, “Now shall you deal with me, o prince, and all the powers of hell,” as she turns into an enormous black and purple dragon surrounded by a sea of flame. Come to think of it, the best way to kill Maleficent would probably be with kindness. Imagine how furious she’d be if someone pretended not to understand that she meant them harm after a dramatic flourish like that!)
So on the one hand, a live action reimagining of the Sleeping Beauty story starring Angelina Jolie as Maleficent had a lot going for it.
But on the other hand, when was the last time you saw a live-action Disney re-imagining of a classic story? If your answer to that question was ever, then I’m sure you already understand why I wanted to temper my expectations. Disney churns out these movies every spring, and usually they’re beyond disappointing. You go in wondering, “Will this be as good as X, one of the favorite movies of my childhood?” and you leave the theater in the throes of an existential crisis, wondering why you’ve ever liked anything, and asking yourself if you should have foregone the over-priced movie theater soda in favor of a tall glass of hemlock.
To my resounding joy (and surprise), however, Maleficent was not a horrible, regrettable, bland disaster as I’d feared it could be. Instead, it’s a pretty great summer movie that everyone in the family can enjoy. I went with my parents (early 60s), my husband (mid-30s, like me), our children (11 and 5), and my sister and her friend (both in their 20s). We all liked the movie and had lots of complimentary and exciting things to share about our favorite parts as we left the theater afterwards.
The Good:
I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but Angelina Jolie is pretty. Some might say beautiful, but “pretty” was the word my five-year-old daughter used—again and again and again and again and again!
Once Maleficent grew to be an adult, I spent most of Jolie’s early scenes listening to my daughter whisper, “Wow, she is pretty! Look at her! Isn’t she so pretty? She is beautiful! Have you noticed that she is much prettier than other people? Look how pretty she is! Most people don’t look like that! That’s for sure! She sure is pretty! I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anyone so pretty! And look at her fingernails! Look how white they are! How does she get them to glow like that? Maybe she mixes up a fairy incantation with like…old pieces of sticks…and frogs and stuff! She is just so, so pretty!”
My daughter has got to learn to stop whispering so much during movies (especially given that she scolds everyone else in the family to keep quiet). But I think she’s onto something about Angelina Jolie’s looks. If I were the cinematographer or the costume designer, and someone informed me, “Good news! They just cast the lead! Angelina Jolie will be playing Maleficent!” I would start dancing in the streets for joy. I mean, who wouldn’t want film Angelina Jolie in a Maleficent costume? To be honest, I think I might enjoy that, and I’m not even in the film industry. I’d do it for free. (It’s a good thing they didn’t ask me, though, because the people making the movie did a magnificent job.)
I seriously would have watched an entire movie that was just Jolie walking around in costume with no plot with no complaints. She spends quite a bit of the movie posing, and this all works to the film’s advantage. If like me, you’re an amateur photographer, and you’re having a hard time making your shots of stark scenery pop, might I suggest adding Angelina Jolie’s face surrounded by a Maleficent headdress into the foreground? Honestly, I think they should take some of the close-ups of her face from the film and repurpose them as cosmetics commercials. That red lipstick of hers definitely makes an impression, and it gets quite a lot of showcased screentime.
Jolie doesn’t just look beautiful and amazing in her costume. She also copies the posture of the animated Maleficent as well as the accent and inflections of animated Maleficent’s voice, provided by the self-possessed and sinister Eleanor Audley. Jolie must have watched Sleeping Beauty ninety million times to prepare for the role because she really has Audley’s cadence down, and she also carries herself just right.
Truthfully, it’s good that Jolie does such a masterful job of looking and sounding like Maleficent because about eighty-perfect of the movie is just her standing around reacting to stuff. The cast is rounded out by some truly fine actors, but we spend most of the movie right up in Maleficent’s face. Elle Fanning is a very talented actress who does some lovely work as Aurora, but she has nowhere near the screentime or presence of her co-star.
As I’ve said, the movie would be totally watchable if it was basically just Jolie putting on a Maleficent fashion show for ninety minutes. But what makes Maleficent better than most movies like it is the fact that sometimes Jolie does much more than simply make faces and cackle. Some scenes are very moving and require a talented actress (not just a beautiful mimic). Maleficent isn’t reduced to a cartoon antagonist in this film. Instead, she’s presented as a well-rounded, complex character with a past, motivations, fears, dreams, flaws, strengths. In the animated feature, Maleficent is essentially static. She starts out evil and remains evil. But the movie’s Maleficent is much more dynamic, constantly growing and changing. The movie begins when she is a child and takes us through her life, illustrating clearly both how she becomes damaged and how she eventually finds healing.
I think of Maleficent as being a movie for kids, but when I said that after the movie, everyone else pointed out, “But it’s very dark.” Still, it is a film that the entire family can enjoy. In fact, I honestly think Sleeping Beauty may be scarier to young children since this film introduces Maleficent first, makes her a sympathetic character, and shows us the entire unfolding conflict primarily from her perspective.
My son said that his favorite thing about the movie is that it “makes Maleficent seem like the good guy.” It does this so effectively that early on, in a battle between the humans and the fairies, when “monsters” started attacking men, my five-year-old found the scene delightful and began to laugh. (There’s no reason to be afraid of the monsters if you’re already on their side.) The film makes sure our sympathies are with Maleficent early on and does so very successfully. In fact, as my daughter watched the dark fairy observing young Aurora, she cooed at one point, “Awww! I think she’s starting to like it!” Ordinarily, my daughter would refer to a young female child as “she,” but Maleficent had referred to the “beastie” as an “it,” so my five-year-old did, too.
Jolie really owns the movie and steals the show, but Fanning is good, too. The film certainly has a great cast. The three good fairies are played by a pretty high-powered trio of British actresses, Imelda Staunton, Lesley Manville, and Juno Temple. Given the shocking incompetence of the three fairies in the animated film—sixteen years without magic, and they still can’t put together a simple birthday party!—the reimagining of the fairies’ role in Aurora’s life makes quite a bit of sense, and all three women are terrific in their parts.
Unlike his affable counterpart in Sleeping Beauty, King Stefan becomes increasingly paranoid, violent, and detached from reality as the story progresses, so of course, he’s played by Sharlto Copely. And I really liked Sam Riley as the magically mutable raven Diaval. (He has such a lovely, almost musical line that also shows up in the previews. “What have you done to my beautiful self?” I love that line. His delivery is to-die-for.)
Child actress Isobelle Molloy does such a fantastic job playing the young Maleficent that I found myself wondering what other big projects I might see her in soon. (Part of me feels like some distant day, it will be a trivia question. What was Isobelle Molloy’s first big movie role?)
With a cast like the one assembled, the movie can hardly help but be well acted. It’s also pretty well written. Not only do the story elements make sense, but there’s also surprising complexity and subtext. And of course, the movie has several exciting action scenes and a number of visually impressive moments. (Even my daughter—who refuses to wear 3D glasses—leaned over to me at one point and whispered, “Ooh! I’ll bet that looks so awesome in 3D!”)
Funniest Scene:
As Maleficent watches Aurora grow, she intends to keep her distance, remaining aloof and menacing. But this does not exactly work out. In one delightful scene, the five-year-old princess runs up to the dark fairy and demands, “Up!”
When questioned, my five-year-old called this out as her favorite part in the movie. I also loved the scene because it piqued my curiosity. As soon as I saw the face of little Aurora, I became just about positive that it belonged to Jolie’s own daughter Vivienne. For the rest of the movie, I waited eagerly for the credits, so I could confirm my suspicion (and eventually I did). You can totally tell that Aurora is Vivienne Jolie-Pitt. For one thing, she looks just like Brad Pitt. And once you notice that, the dynamic between the two in the scene makes you hope Jolie really is playing off her own daughter. The comic elements of the scene work even better because the girl is Jolie’s actual child.
Diaval and Maleficent also have a very amusing relationship as over the years their master/servant dynamic evolves into a kind of mutually appreciated camaraderie.
Best Scene Visually:
Basically, if Angelina Jolie is in the shot, it’s gorgeous, so visually this film is set the moment she’s in costume.
But apart from all the wonderful shots of Jolie looking amazing, there’s also a thrilling bit of visual storytelling in the film. When Aurora finds what her father has been keeping encased in a glass box, the audience gets really excited, not because of what’s there but because of what’s happening to what’s there.
Best Scene:
Several family members singled out the scene where Maleficent tries to remove the curse as a highlight of the film, and I will say this teaches a brilliant lesson about the dangers of doing evil or giving into the temptation to destroy an enemy.
Personally, however, I love the scene when Maleficent wakes and finds (to her horror) that her body is different. Her cries are so viscerally disturbing, so raw and wretched. When I watched Jolie’s performance here, I saw that she was committed to the character. She wasn’t just phoning it in, doing the bare minimum to skate by in a summer crowd pleaser. What I really liked the most is that she reacts appropriately to the situation. So often in movies like this, similarly horrendous things happen to characters, but the evil and horror of the acts gets glossed over so quickly. But here we see that what Stefan does to Maleficent causes her intense suffering. And because this scene is so painfully believable, the rest of the movie also makes sense. By the time we get to the familiar scene at the christening (also brilliantly staged), we have an entirely new perspective of Maleficent and a much enhanced understanding of her motives.
I also like the subtext of this scene. It seems capable of supporting so many readings. But I particularly love the way the Stefan/Maleficent relationship highlights a common, frequently occurring problem between men and women. Maleficent believes that Stefan loves her, so she trusts him completely with herself. In fact, however, instead of loving the whole of her, he sees her as a collection of valuable parts to be taken and used to his greatest advantage. We always hear about men objectifying women or fixating on certain body parts instead of seeing a whole person. (To be fair, this isn’t always a strictly male/female problem since anybody can objectify anyone, but it often comes up in that context.) Stefan takes this to a more-literal-than-usual extreme. Of course, most women do not have the part that Stefan fixates on, but I think that anyone who awakes to betrayal and a sense of being less than whole would react with intense agony as Maleficent does.
Strongly in the film’s favor is its demonstration that although this act of perfidy upends Maleficent’s sense of self and damages her psychologically for a time, such damage does not have to be permanent. Lots of times we get G-rated movies that tell us, “Nothing that bad will ever happen,” or R-rated movies that tell us, “Once you grow up, life is basically just a succession of bad things happening and if you believe there’s goodness in the world, you’re naïve.” The PG-rated Maleficent offers the appealing and highly realistic compromise, “Sometimes really genuinely horrible things happen to us, but that doesn’t mean that life can never be good again.”
I really like the fact that the film does not gloss over the inconvenient truth that sometimes in life, people are cruel, and cruelty can cause intense suffering.
Best Action Sequence:
My husband really likes the scene where Maleficent faces a maze of metal thorns. As far as I’m concerned, the concept that metal burns fairies is a better than average plot point (for this type of movie) because it actually makes sense. There’s an inherent logic to the idea that creatures full of natural magic would recoil from the sting of manmade technology.
The long fight scene at the end isn’t bad (although there is one disappointing element), but I personally think that some of the close-ups of Jolie’s face as she’s speaking have more energy than any of the action. For instance, in the wonderfully staged throne-room christening scene, Maleficent’s vengeful humbling of King Stefan is tense and almost breath-taking. I was on the edge of my seat just watching each minute change in her carefully chosen facial expressions.
The Negatives:
Maleficent is a girl who knows how to make an entrance. In the animated Sleeping Beauty, she sure knows how to make one memorable exit, too. That’s probably the one kind of anticlimactic aspect of this live action film. Maleficent never turns into a dragon (although I could swear that at one point during the film, we do hear the distant sounds of Eleanor Audley’s triumphant shrieking and cackling. I don’t know where to look to confirm this suspicion, but I’m almost positive they included a tiny bit of sound from Sleeping Beauty).
Lest you dragon enthusiasts be crushed, I will reassure you that the movie does give us a dragon. But sadly, the dragon doesn’t really get to do very much. I suppose if you’re demystifying a villain by humanizing her, you can’t in good conscience have her scream, “Now shall you deal with me, o prince, and all the powers of hell,” and then turn into a big ginormous dragon and start trying to kill everyone with hellfire.
In this movie, Maleficent is a sympathetic (and apparently ironically named) character, so she does not cap off her adventures by turning into a horrible Satanic beast of destruction. I guess to keep her sympathetic, it has to be that way. Still, a part of me thinks a huge opportunity is wasted when you’re building a movie around a famous character known for transforming herself into a terrifying dragon and then you don’t ever let her change into a dragon!
On the other hand, in this movie we do get to see her fly, something that never happened even once in Sleeping Beauty.
It’s also true that if you go into this film wanting to hate it, you surely won’t be disappointed. I liked so many aspects of the movie that I’m willing to overlook some of its less than perfect scenes, but it definitely has flaws. A number of the scenes feel a little choppy and less effective than they could be, but as the movie progresses, it becomes increasingly engrossing, and most of these little problems sort themselves out eventually.
Fans of Frozen may find the ending a little repetitive. Of course, we should always keep in mind that Disney could make ten more films with similar endings, and they would still be in the extreme minority of the Disney canon, in which at least ninety-five thousand movies have a more “traditional” “happy ending.” Given what I’ve heard Jolie say in past interviews about how much her life improved when she adopted her first son Maddox, I can easily see what might powerfully appeal to her about this sort of ending. I did think it was kind of hilarious that in the final scene Prince Philip shows up stumbling around awkwardly, grinning uncertainly like, “Well, don’t worry, anyone, here I am, too,” and Elle Fanning has this vague smile on her face like, “It’s nice to see you, I guess????” It would be easy to imagine them living happily ever after for audience members (though possibly not for them). There’s a very strange, half-hearted deliberateness to the entire thing.
Overall:
I liked Maleficent a lot and so did my entire family. Granted, it’s mostly just Angelina Jolie posing formidably in a cover-of-Vogue-worthy horned costume, but admit it, you’d pay to see that right now. (The costume is pretty great, I have to say. But don’t get any ideas about trick-or-treating as Maleficent next Halloween because that’s my daughter’s new plan! So back off!)
Actually, the movie has surprising depth, an almost shockingly coherent story, a talented and (more importantly) well utilized cast, some great lessons to take home, plenty of intriguing ideas, a few gripping action scenes, and visuals that probably look tremendous in 3D.
If you don’t want to see Maleficent in theaters, then I recommend taking a long nap until you come to your senses. Maybe you think you don’t want to see it, but if I know you, I know what you’ll do. (And if you don’t get that, then obviously you need to see this movie if only for the vaguely Gothish, dirge-like cover of “Once Upon a Dream” that plays during the closing credits).