Review of Maleficent (2014) by Dana F — 24 Oct 2015

There are two schools of thought for a film like this:  on one side you can say that this movie is a new and different take on an old fairy tale; on the other side you can say that Hollywood is so desperate for origin stories that they've started using villains to make a buck.

  Either way, my primary problem with this movie is the premise.  For me, Maleficent has always been the most terrifying Disney villain, but this movie gives her the "Wicked" treatment with an origin story that explains how she really isn't all that bad.

  I have serious issues with portraying this classic movie villain as anything but unspeakably evil, and giving her moral complexity just takes all the fun out of the character.  The story chronicles Maleficent's fall from grace and subsequent redemption, but the character changes so completely and abruptly that it's not believable for a second.

  She's super good, then she's despicably evil, then she's good again?  Pick a side!!  This movie would have been better served by simply making it the story of how she became evil, with the film ending right where the original Disney animated movie starts.

.. like a prequel.  That would have been pretty awesome and I'm mourning the movie that could have been.   As it is, it's not really a "new take on an old story" that it claims to be, since it changes the original story entirely.

  That being said, if you only judge it as the piece of entertainment it was clearly meant to be, I guess it's passable.  It's pretty to look at (though I can't forgive the bad CGI fairies straight out of 'Shrek' circa 2001), Jolie is fun to watch, and the spin they put on the original fairy tale is pretty clever.

  However, there is just not much to the story, and the telling of what little exists is disjointed.  Overall, the plot was too thin and the characters too underdeveloped to grab me.  Of course, it's not helped by my distaste for the fundamental premise.

  By making Maleficent a sympathetic character, she is stripped of what made her powerful.  Sometimes a villain should just be a villain. .