3/5
Disney's Maleficent stars Angelina Jolie as the titular character, and her casting is the best decision the filmmakers' could have made. She gives a spectacularly complex performance as the kind-hearted Maleficent, a fairy who places a curse on Sleeping Beauty as revenge for being stripped of her wings and the power of flight. She brings depth and gravitas that has felt absent in most Disney characters and she alone is the reason to see this movie.
Although the story is full of surprising twists, it is laid out and presented with such unoriginal style as to make it feel old and overused. We start with a voice-over explaining that there are two worlds: the world of fairies and the world of humans. We are introduced to Maleficent's childhood and the magical world she inhabits. She swirls and swoops in extravagant 3D as if to show off the prowess of Disney's CGI programmers. Then she meets a human, falls in love, and gets her heart broken. And on and on it goes in such an unsurprising and familiar progression as to make the whole movie feel like something we've seen a hundred times before, except this time they've recycled familiar names and placed them on opposite sides of the moral compass from the first time they were in a Disney movie.
Now, to be fair, I am far from an expert on Disney and far from an expert on Maleficent. I haven't seen Sleeping Beauty and I've barely seen Maleficent (I was extremely tired and found myself nodding off several times during the movie)! So I suppose it is a little unfair that I am reviewing this movie. But looking at this movie from a purely cinematic perspective, I see a lot of missed potential. Although the art direction and costuming are fantastic, Maleficent feels like even more of a money-making operation than most of Disney's products. They are cashing in on the Wicked train by turning a bad guy into a misunderstood good guy and passing the bad guy buck onto some other poor schmuck. Whereas Wicked felt fresh, original, and textured, Maleficent just feels like a copycat. I wanted this movie to be as phenomenal as Wicked was, but I didn't get that. A good movie that disappoints you is worse than a mediocre movie that meets all your expectations.
IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1587310/