Remember Sleeping Beauty? Try to picture how it would be if every aspect of it were turned up-side down. You'd have this.
The recent outbreak of efforts to rewrite fairy tales and make them more adult and dark is getting to a point where new extremes of darkness and violence are all that is seen, with ever more aggressive themes.
Maleficent takes this "darkness for its own sake" approach to new levels, but doesn't really come up with anything interesting in its new take on this old story. It fancies itself that way, by cranking out some now exhausted themes like "evil people are really the good ones' they're just misunderstood," There is an act of pointless violence that is an obvious reference to rape, and the story line tries to build a scorned woman motif from that.
Ultimately this is offered as an excuse for someone planning to murder an innocent child. Sorry, nobody who wants to kill a child is a hero. Ever.
The royal family are all rewritten as power hungry and vicious, and the fairies that once protected the child are stupid, inept, and useless.
I was wondering who was doing all the mugging and overacting underneath all that Maleficent costuming. Who else: Angelina Jolie being self-important, trying hard to be a frightening screen presence. She tries to chew up every scene she's in with glares and monotonal line reads. She seems to think (and she's done this in several movies now) that if she's wearing black, she's a scary villain. No, just one you look forward to seeing her get exterminated so she'll shut up.
Special effects are impressive, but always overdone. Every battle looks like something George Lucas and Michael Bay came up with when they got drunk together one night. Acting is poor throughout, and the director's heavy-handed approach is loud but never interesting.
This movie tries hard to impress you with smoke and mirrors, but does not succeed.
The recent outbreak of efforts to rewrite fairy tales and make them more adult and dark is getting to a point where new extremes of darkness and violence are all that is seen, with ever more aggressive themes.
Maleficent takes this "darkness for its own sake" approach to new levels, but doesn't really come up with anything interesting in its new take on this old story. It fancies itself that way, by cranking out some now exhausted themes like "evil people are really the good ones' they're just misunderstood," There is an act of pointless violence that is an obvious reference to rape, and the story line tries to build a scorned woman motif from that.
Ultimately this is offered as an excuse for someone planning to murder an innocent child. Sorry, nobody who wants to kill a child is a hero. Ever.
The royal family are all rewritten as power hungry and vicious, and the fairies that once protected the child are stupid, inept, and useless.
I was wondering who was doing all the mugging and overacting underneath all that Maleficent costuming. Who else: Angelina Jolie being self-important, trying hard to be a frightening screen presence. She tries to chew up every scene she's in with glares and monotonal line reads. She seems to think (and she's done this in several movies now) that if she's wearing black, she's a scary villain. No, just one you look forward to seeing her get exterminated so she'll shut up.
Special effects are impressive, but always overdone. Every battle looks like something George Lucas and Michael Bay came up with when they got drunk together one night. Acting is poor throughout, and the director's heavy-handed approach is loud but never interesting.
This movie tries hard to impress you with smoke and mirrors, but does not succeed.