A reimagining of the 1959 Disney classic "Sleeping Beauty," first-time director Robert Stromberg's "Maleficent" attempts to wrap a children's fairy tale around a grown-up story of betrayal and revenge. Unfortunately, like the two warring kingdoms in the film, those themes prove to be bad neighbors. “Maleficent” is a decently entertaining but uneven movie that leaves both adult and child audiences wanting a little something more.
The film begins with young Maleficent, a winged fey who blissfully soars about the Moors, interacting with this fairy kingdom's strange and wonderful creatures. Maleficent soon meets Stefan, a boy from the neighboring human kingdom. A tentative friendship eventually blossoms into young love until, for reasons that aren't entirely clear, Stefan's ambitions lead him to stay away from the Moors for several years. Now an adult, Maleficent (Angelina Jolie) becomes the defender of the Moors, protecting it from the advancing armies of the human kingdom. Following the humans' defeat, an adult Stefan (Sharlto Copley) returns to Maleficent, only to cruelly betray her in a bid to become the new king.
Wounded both physically and emotionally, Maleficent is driven to remake herself (with the help of makeup master Rick Baker) into the iconic villain of the original "Sleeping Beauty." When "Maleficent" finally intersects with the first film, at the birth of the Stefan's daughter Aurora, Jolie is at her best. The scene is a near-perfect live-action remake of the original, but the scorned woman backstory — and the delicious vampishness that Jolie plays it with — really gives it deeper meaning and shows how great this film could have been. Director Robert Stromberg and writer Linda Woolverton ("Beauty and the Beast") manage to craft a sympathetic origin story for one of the most famous and sinister Disney villains of all time and have ample opportunity to explore a character with rich depth and complexity.
Instead, the adult story fails to fly any higher, its wings clipped by the decision to make this a children's film first and foremost. As a kid's movie "Maleficent" is plenty serviceable, as the second act is filled with cooing babies, bumbling fairies, forest creatures and magic spells. The world of the Moors is visually superb and well-populated with fantastical creatures, as one would expect from Stromberg, winner of back-to-back Academy Awards for Art Direction on "Avatar" and "Alice in Wonderland." Kids will enjoy watching Maleficent futilely attempt to resist the charms of "the beastie" as she refers to earnest young Aurora (Elle Fanning), eventually coming to love the child like her own and regretting the curse she has placed upon her.
The film also manages to follow in the footsteps of "Frozen" in the way the female protagonists resolve the conflicts presented without the assistance of any stereotypical Prince Charming types. While the theme of empowerment is an important one, and a trend I hope Disney continues in all its films, in this case it simply seems to underscore the missed opportunity that ultimately makes "Maleficent" an unsatisfying whole. Also rated PG, "Frozen" managed to deftly and boldly mix themes such as self-reliance, sisterly love and gender equality in a wildly original and entertaining way that appealed equally to both adults and children. By comparison, "Maleficent" seems to shy away from some of the adult themes it hints at early on, and would be far better served by letting Jolie chew the scenery with a subversive smile and a knowing wink to the grownups.
3 Yaps
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pgmFAOgm5E&w=560&h=315]