Maleficent: Mistress of Evil ** / *****
Directed by: Joachim
Rønning.
Written by: Micah
Fitzerman-Blue and Noah Harpster and Linda Woolverton.
Starring: Angelina Jolie
(Maleficent), Michelle Pfeiffer (Queen Ingrith), Elle Fanning (Princess
Aurora), Harris Dickinson (Prince Phillip), Sam Riley (Diaval), Chiwetel
Ejiofor (Conall), Ed Skrein (Borra),
Robert Lindsay (King John), David Gyasi (Percival), Jenn Murray (Gerda), Juno
Temple (Thistlewit), Imelda Staunton (Knotgrass), Lesley Manville (Flittle), Kae
Alexander (Ini), Judith Shekoni (Shrike), Miyavi (Udo), Warwick Davis
(Lickspittle).
The
original Maleficent (2014) wasn’t a particularly great movie, but it was at
least an interesting one – and one of the few times in recent years in which
Disney tried to actually do something new when updating an animated classic to
the real of live action. Perhaps they realized that Sleeping Beauty (1959) is
mostly a snooze other than the villain – Maleficent – so making a movie about
her was the only logical thing to do unless you wanted to make another snooze.
And yet, for all the flaws in the film, there were genuine moments of human
emotion – like Jolie’s Maleficent awakening to find that her wings have been
stolen from her – a moment made deliberately to resemble a rape victim’s trauma
– but in a way the kids in the audience wouldn’t quite pick up the same way.
The Maleficent of that film was more of an anti-hero than a villain – certainly
the King, and his army were worse than she was, and only Princess Aurora
herself (Elle Fanning) was an innocent – something even Maleficent eventually
realizes.
We didn’t
really need a sequel to that film – but it made money, and it was Disney, so of
course we got one. And the initial look at the films seems promising – a film
in which Angelina Jolie and Michelle Pfeiffer go toe-to-toe certainly sounds
promising. And yet, outside of the films best sequence – an extended dinner
scene in which Pfeiffer, the queen of a nearby kingdom whose son, Prince
Philip, wants to marry Aurora – in which Pfeiffer does everything in a
passive-aggressive way to anger Maleficent, we are mostly denied the awesome
toe-to-toe that could have been. What we have instead is an another CGI fueled
action movie – one in which a giant battle pretty much takes up the last third
of the film, before they can slap the happy ending on. We spend so much time on
this battle that the film all but abandons any pretense of examining the
effects on its characters – flattening them all into bland and forgettable
stand-ins for good and evil. Jolie herself seems shunted to the side for far
too long here – she spends time with her own kind, in their hidden world, when
Pfeiffer is planning and carrying out her genocidal rampage. The movie doesn’t
really forget about her – but it almost does.
The movie
also, probably by accident, ends up being more retrograde in its outlook than
Disney has tried to be in recent years. They have tried, even in movies with
Princesses, to not tie everything together with a wedding and a happily ever
after, but that’s exactly what happens here – where right after a massacre,
essentially both sides come together for a wedding that will fix everything –
the one and only bad person has been vanquished, so just get over it I guess.
The film
makes poor use of its talented cast, and the CGI isn’t really up to snuff
either – it’s fairly lackadaisical and by-the-numbers, offering nothing all
that imaginative. It stands out as a pretty big disappointment after the first
film – which was hardly a masterpiece, but tried to do something different for
Disney. With this film, it seems, they’re more comfortable with the same old
same old.
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