Review: Maleficent

This re-interpretation of “Sleeping Beauty”, young Stefan wanders away from his local kingdom into the moors, where trolls, fairies and other magical creatures live. He meets Maleficent, a winged fairy, and the two become fast friends, and before long Maleficent has developed even stronger feelings for the boy. As the years pass, Maleficent (now played by Angelina Jolie) ascends to become the leader of her people, whilst the king of the human world attempts to attack the kingdom of the moors. A now grown-up Stefan (played by Sharlto Copley) has ambitions to take over the thrown from the aging king (played by Kenneth Cranham). He is tasked with killing Maleficent (anyone who does so will take over from the dying king), but instead he drugs his former companion and removes her wings. Stefan becomes king but earns an enemy in the now vengeful Maleficent (who is already probably jealous that Stefan has moved on to another woman. ‘Coz y’know how chicks are, right?), who disrupts the christening of his daughter Aurora and places a curse on the newborn; On her sixteenth birthday Aurora will prick her finger on a spinning wheel and fall into a sleep from which she can only be awakened by true love’s kiss. The new king promptly sees all spinning wheels removed from the kingdom and has his newborn baby taken away to the woods to be raised by the three good fairies (played by the likes of Imelda Staunton, Juno Temple, and Lesley Manville). Curiously, Maleficent secretly keeps an eye on the child through the years, before finally coming face to face with her (with Aurora now played by Elle Fanning). Although Maleficent tries to keep a frosty distance, the lovely young girl can’t help but win Maleficent over. Oh dear, what has she done, dooming this girl to a prickly fate? Yep, went there. Brenton Thwaites plays the charming Prince Phillip, Sam Riley plays Maleficent’s sidekick, formerly a crow (Yep, a crow).

 

The most important credit in this entire film from 2014 is Angelina Jolie’s Executive Producer credit. For although this re-imagining of the classic fairy tale is directed by Robert Stromberg (a debutant director who formerly served as production designer on the overrated and corny “Avatar”) and written by Linda Woolverton (“The Lion King”, and most tellingly, Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland”), everything that appears on screen suggests a vanity project for the star/EP changing the perfectly workable story so that the villainess is the main character and Jolie’s ego can be fed. However, the problem is, this re-invention has not been for the better. It simply doesn’t work comfortably. Maleficent, in addition to being the title character, isn’t merely fleshed out into a 3D character, she has been completely re-written to the point where not only is she unrecognisable, she also ruins the damn story, really.

 

You see, in this version of the story, Maleficent isn’t evil. She’s merely driven to vengeful/spiteful behaviour after being wronged by men. It results in a character with absolutely no consistency whatsoever. One minute, Maleficent is scary and condemning an innocent baby to a coma from age 16. Next minute, she’s being maternal and caring about her, in addition to also being rather comical and light-hearted. They make her far too cruel at the outset for the later softening to make any credible sense, even for a fairy tale. Since they end up softening the blow so much with the character, it ultimately leaves us with no villain, to the point where the screenwriter has to work overtime to turn King Stefan into the villain in the last quarter. Up until that point there was too much shading and ambiguity to really call him the villain. By the time he finally goes full-on villain, it’s too late. It seems jarring, tacked-on, and unconvincing. Maybe if they made it clearer that he cuts off Maleficent’s wings for selfish/cowardly purposes it might’ve worked, but the way I saw it, he was torn between his greed and lingering feelings for Maleficent. He was supposed to kill her, instead he merely pretends to kill her and cuts off her wings. That’s not terribly black-hearted to me, certainly not black-hearted enough. He has basically made sure that no one else will think to kill her because they already think she’s dead. That’s how I saw it, at least (Others see Stefan as a date-rape drugger, which is too absurd an analysis for even me to champion. I mean really, it’s not a roofie he’s giving her for crying out loud, it’s still a family movie!).

 

Instead of a genuine desire to put a new spin on a classic, it’s seemingly a project re-shaped to serve the ego of its star, albeit a perfectly cast star. All the scenes of Maleficent hanging around in secret as the three fairies raise Aurora not only diminish the character’s evil, but seem tacked on to give Jolie more screen time. It’s obvious and it pisses me off because if this were done in more traditional fashion for the most part, it’d be really strong stuff. The funny thing is, it might’ve still worked to an extent as a re-invention if it weren’t quite so skewed to serve its star. Maleficent is too evil in placing the curse, far too remorseful afterwards, and awkwardly comedic at other times. The way it has been done, Maleficent comes off as the hero, villain, anti-hero, and love interest all in one. Yes, she’s even the love interest. Watch the film and tell me I’m wrong about that (Don’t. I know I’m wrong, it’s a ‘motherly’ kiss. I was being facetious. But still…c’mon). That’s how out-of-whack they’ve gotten the story, that Maleficent is essentially every character. Except the comic relief, and even then she indulges in that on an occasion or two. My God, was everyone else involved too scared to speak out against this egotism run rampant? And despite being written by a woman, produced and starring a woman, the whole things reeks of sexism, strangely enough. Given that this is already a story with a heroine who is passive/unconscious for much of the story, I just find it really foul that Maleficent’s motivation should be so simplistic, antiquated and frankly sexist as being motivated by being betrayed by a dude. For fuck’s sake, why not give her PMT as well? A woman wrote this? In what century? Seriously, even the Disney version from the late 50s is more modern in thinking than what Woolverton gives us in this version (Woolverton’s attempt at a feminist/modern spin in the opening of “Alice in Wonderland” was that otherwise fine film’s weakest aspect by far. It was tacked-on, unnecessary, and uninteresting). Feminists will hate this film even more than the Disney version, unless they were supposed to be distracted by Aussie actor Brenton Thwaites’ beefcake factor? The villain is motivated by a broken heart and the heroine is wet, useless, and occasionally completely passive (and the latter is true in every version, admittedly). Wow, real bra-burning stuff this is. The film is man-hating to an extent, but it’s so antiquated that I’d argue that it sets women back a few decades by being so simplistically man-hating.

 

The most insane thing? Janet McTeer narrates the film as the adult Aurora! So why did she short-change herself in the telling of the story? To correct the record, sure, but it has been skewed too far in the opposite direction. No, it just won’t do. I must say though, that for all the problems I have with the film, boredom isn’t remotely one of them. It’s a somewhat entertaining film, and it certainly has its strong points.

 

Chief among the assets is oddly enough Angelina Jolie herself. Whatever issues I have with the script, I must say that this is Jolie’s best performance since the 1998 cable TV movie “Gia”. Maleficent, whether watered down/inconsistent or not, is quite simply the role she was born to play. She is particularly effective during the darker moments of the film. If this were a more traditional (yet still fleshed-out) version of the “Sleeping Beauty” story, Jolie really would’ve knocked it out of the park, and her performance is still the best thing here. She is so good at being so damn evil, and perfectly fine the rest of the time, no matter what I think of the character. She also looks absolutely perfect, with her drastically-altered (presumably digitally, I don’t think makeup would’ve been enough) cheekbones and gorgeous eyes. The film itself also looks absolutely stunning. It reminds me a tad of the Ridley Scott flop “Legend”, only not quite as creepy. I’m not sure how much is the work of Aussie cinematographer Dean Semler (“Razorback”, “Dances With Wolves”, “Apocalypto”), or the FX team, but whoever it is, they have definitely done their job well. The CGI woodland creatures are excellent and far more convincingly rendered than anything (outside of Gollum) in “The Hobbit”. The shrunken versions of Imelda Staunton, Juno Temple…and the ‘other’ one, are also really cute and not at all creepy like I had anticipated. The music score by James Newton Howard (“Diggstown”, “Glengarry Glen Ross”, “Signs”, “Waterworld”) is especially impressive, too.

 

Although the role by design isn’t terribly interesting or strong, Elle Fanning is a positively lovely Sleeping Beauty/Aurora, and it’s always nice to see old pro Kenneth Cranham, however briefly. Brenton Thwaites isn’t much of an actor, but he at least shows Chris Hemsworth how to put on an English accent without sounding like you’re in a bad ‘old timey ye merry England’ “SNL” sketch. Sure, it’s barely a change at all from his natural Aussie accent, but the subtlety is actually appreciated. At least he doesn’t sound like he has the flu and a bunch of plums in his mouth. The weakest member of the cast by far is the awkward and not very well-cast South African actor Sharlto Copley (“District 9”) who tries and fails to maintain a Scottish brogue as the conflicted/confusing/maybe evil King Stefan. Copley seems a bit lost with the role, and he completely bollocks’ the accent too. It’s a shame because the character is actually interestingly shaded for at least the first half of the film before it goes awry.

 

It looks and sounds magnificent, it’s never boring, and Angelina Jolie is ideally cast, but the classic story has been re-shaped (whether by Jolie, producer Joe Roth, screenwriter Woolverton, or whoever it may have actually been) in a too-skewed fashion that doesn’t really work, especially when there’s already a version out there that still works just fine. If you’re gonna go the “Wicked” route, you have to make sure you actually pull it off. This one, which is closer in fact to “Oz the Great and Powerful” than “Wicked”, just doesn’t quite come together, despite interesting elements. “Wicked”, didn’t actually use the basic plot of “The Wizard of Oz” all that much. It focuses on a lot of stuff that happened before Dorothy turns up, enhancing the well-known story and characters. It’s a backstory. “Maleficent” is a re-write. Watch the Disney animated version, it’s not one of their masterpieces, but it’s pretty good and better than this watchable but disappointing ‘hell hath no fury like a woman scorned’ cliché. It’s not a bad film at all, but why watch this when there’s other, better versions?

 

Rating: C+