Film Review | Maleficent

Sometimes, actors dominate a production so utterly that any other element begins to seem superfluous to their performance – to their mere presence, even. This has always struck me as slightly curious: shouldn’t actors slide into the texture of the film, chameleon-like, and serve to deliver and accentuate whatever the story requires of them?

But alas, it’s not as though Hollywood listens to logic, ever. And so, here comes yet another example of just the thing I was talking about: Disney’s Maleficent, a supposedly ‘fresh’ take on the Sleeping Beauty story, starring Angelina Jolie. Starring the crap out of Angelina Jolie. In fact, if Jolie starred in this any harder, the posters would have had us squinting; the trailers forcing us to cover our eyes with our hands to avoid permanent blindness.

As the promotional material made it very clear from the beginning – that’s just about a year ago when promotion for the film began in earnest – a Mads-Mikkelsen-cheekboned version of Angie Jolie will be taking on the role of the gothic-collared Disney antagonist, in a blockbuster which will purport to tell the familiar story from her side of things.

Being something of a chiselled sex goddess even before she was ALSO a serial adoptee and UN Goodwill Ambassador, any film starring Angelina Jolie – yes, the repetition of her name is part of the point – was bound to attract attention… never mind one that taps into our collective childhood memory to serve up a new version of a classic Disney cartoon.

So it was a given that Jolie would eclipse this production from the start. But does her character arc justify the hype?

Well.

Maleficent starts with a young version of our (anti) heroine, assiduously but joyously overseeing the fairy realm of which she is part, and which is strictly segregated from its neighbouring human settlement. But a crack in this cold war scenario appears when Maleficent (Isobelle Molloy) meets a young human intruder, Stefan (Jackson Bews) and the star-crossed pair fall in love. But as the years go on, Stefan shows more and more interest in the “ambitious” world of men.

To prove his worth to the King Henry (Kenneth Cranham) – who is eager to have his revenge on the fairy lands after he suffers a humiliating military defeat at the hands of Maleficent (now Angelina Jolie) and her tree-folk soldiers – Stefan (now Sharlito Copley) pays a long-overdue visit to Maleficent’s neck of the woods… only to lull her to sleep with a potion and cut off her wings.

The King is satisfied, and names Stefan as his successor. Cue convenient jump-cut by which time the King is dead and Stefan is sitting on the throne joined by a pretty queen (Hannah New) and their offspring, Aurora.

Naturally, Maleficent is none too happy with this development, so instead of rejoicing with the rest of the kingdom, she opts to crash the Christening and bestow the child with the familiar curse: on her 16th birthday, Aurora will prick her finger and fall into a deep sleep, and would only be awakened by “true love’s first kiss”.

But as Aurora’s deadline approaches – and as she grows into Elle Fanning – Maleficent begins to get second thoughts…

Neither the groundbreaking masterpiece that its marketing machine suggested it would be, but neither a shoddy fairy-tale-remix of the Snow White and the Huntsman (2012) ilk, Maleficent walks a fine line between average and misguided; by turns spectacular to look at and suitably exciting as any kid-friendly blockbuster should be, but also carelessly put together and running on a confusing central ‘message’.

The key to fairy tales is their – often deceptive – simplicity, and it’s something which has held Disney in good stead for a couple of generations, too. So by focusing on the villain’s perspective – not a bad thing in and of itself – while also trying to tell the story we know and love in a fresh way as possible, the filmmakers set themselves an impossible task from the word go.

So instead of gliding elegantly to the finish line, the film staggers and stumbles along, breaking things on its way. Its supposedly gender-correct retelling of the source material is clumsily handled: simply relegating all the male roles to either suddenly-evil antagonist figures (Stefan), or passive comic relief (Maleficent’s sidekick Diaval, played by Sam Riley) does not redress the balance in a meaningful way.

But neither is the story elegantly told.

Don’t get me wrong: taken in isolation, the film’s prologue is close to flawless. Managing to incorporate both a classic-as-can-be fairy tale narrative (Maleficent and Stefan’s cross-species romance) with a supremely enjoyable slice of fantasy action (Maleficent vs Human Army), it’s also an excellent showcase of the immersive CGI worldbuilding on display: the swooping, richly textured fairyland justifies the enforced 3D screening like no film since Avatar.

But spending so much time on the backstory – and expending so much emotional heft in the first half – the climax just feels like a rushed, foregone conclusion.

For what is essentially a fairy tale story, this revamp proves to be a pretty tricky film: visually stunning and never-boring, it also lacks any real grace.

And what about Angelina, in end?

Well.

Maleficent is a carefully curated presence – so enwrapped in the iconic costume and caked behind so much make-up and CGI that a live person is hard to detect beneath all the trappings. So it’s damning with faint praise to say that Jolie lends the necessary poise to an already stilted creation. But to damn more plainly: that accent isn’t fooling anybody sweetheart, not even the denizens of fairyland.