Review of Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (2019) by Davrosdaleks1 — 21 Oct 2019

I liked this, but there are some caveats.

First off: this movie looks great from the effects to the creature design to the costumes. It just has this great fairy tale fantasy look to it. Loved the world building in this. You get a lotI liked this, but there are some caveats.

First off: this movie looks great from the effects to the creature design to the costumes. It just has this great fairy tale fantasy look to it.

Loved the world building in this. You get a lot better feel for the human society here. A new group of fairies appear in this and they are given more detail than expected with various subsets with their own costumes and customs.

Found the pacing better than the last film, which had a lot of editing from the original cut from what I hear. I also appreciated that this movie was trying to be more of a crowd-pleaser. The last film's moments of harsh emotional darkness did feel like it was trying too hard to be edgy at times. However, I admit that that it did have some great character and dialogue moments with Aurora and Maleficent that Mistress of Evil lacks.

Again, Angelina Jolie is the best part, stealing whatever scene she is in. She delivers the best emotional moments of the film. I was disappointed that the villain's henchwoman Gerda (Jenn Murray) is used sparingly. She is the competent and straight-to-the-task type. She evokes this odd uncomfortableness and does a lot with very few lines of dialogue.

The movie's biggest problem is that it's like Tron Legacy in that the director/screenwriters found ways to depict murders without graphic violence and they felt that that justified them going crazy with them. I found the amount of death went farther than it needed for a family film. To compound the matter, the rushed feel-good ending really feels in conflict with the events that took place before it.

The movie juggles way too many characters. The creators really didn't know what to do with Maleficent's sidekick Diaval (Sam Riley). Michelle Pfeiffer's duplicitous Queen Ingrith's scene time could've been cut. She was an okay villain who I think could've been stronger if her characteristics hadn't gotten old after a while. Also, Maleficent, the star of the film, is only in it half the time.

Despite these legitimate flaws, I still enjoyed myself. This movie is basically fantasy porn. Just understand that this is one of those cases where you're willing to shut your brain off.