Review of Sleeping Beauty (1959) by Catherine S — 11 Nov 2010

Sleeping Beauty is one of the greatest Disney films of all time, with beautiful artwork and a fanciful storyline. Top it off with likeable characters, one of the most awesome villains in movie history, and some magnificent music and you have a fantastic film that is Sleeping Beauty.

Sleeping Beauty is your basic fairy tale. It stars Princess Aurora, daughter to King Stephan. On the day of her birth, she is blessed by fairies with gifts of beauty and song, but the witch Maleficent curses her with a spell that will cause her to die on her sixteenth birthday. One of the fairies alters the spell, so instead of death, she will instead sleep in unaging sleep until she is given true loves first kiss. She is hidden by the fairies in the countryside, completely unaware of her heritage for sixteen years. When she falls in love with a man she meets, she is heartbroken to learn she's betroved to a prince since birth.

Sleeping Beauty took the Disney team over six years to create, mainly because of the detail and style Walt Disney was going for in the film. The time pays off, with gorgeous backrounds that look like the illustrations from a storybook have jumped out and walked around. One of the standouts is, however, the villain Maleficent. She's just so unabashedly evil and cruel that makes her one of the better characters in this film. Heck, I'd call her the best character in the film!

Overall, Sleeping Beauty is a charming and romantic animated film that will please fans new and old of Disney. (Real rating: 100%).