Review of Maleficent (2014) by Oxana — 23 Aug 2014

A classic story gets a remake where the villain, unsurprisingly, gets made into a hero (while still maintaining some villain-like tendencies, but ultimately the 'bad guy' isn't the enemy). I mean, would Angelina Jolie be in this role otherwise?

The story is predictable once you get the idea, so it's good they focused on the events outside the "Sleeping Beauty". Still, it says something about the movie if the most interesting character was Maleficent's shape-changing crow Diaval and everyone else was quite annoying (Aurora was too perfect, her father too deranged (the rest of the on-screen humanity being cut from the same cloth as their greedy, mad king), the pixie trio was there just for the gags...).

You can predict the endgame quite early on, and while the movie is pretty to look at with its up-to-date effects and it does put a spin on the familiar tale, I still wonder... why was this movie made? It left me with one single word in mind: "pointless".

This is not an epic re-telling of a story, and it stumbles at making the story of its own worth.