When told that 'Sleeping Beauty' was to be made into a film I was excited. But when told that it would be told from the point of view of Maleficent, the sorceress who casts the sleeping curse on princess Aurora, I was beside myself.
I am a fan of those tales that tell the ‘true story’ and I was hoping that this would follow in the same line as Wicked, but I also thought that it would disappoint greatly if not done right: at least I was correct on one of those assumptions.
The film is based around Maleficent (Angelina Jolie) and how she came to be the evil sorceress that we came to know from the original Disney tale. It turns out that she was once a fairy that loved a human boy who betrayed her to be King, King Stefan that is (Sharlto Copley). When he had a daughter (Elle Fanning) Maleficent came to loathe the ‘beasty’ and cursed her to prick her finger on her sixteenth birthday. At least that remained the same.
In the original tale, the faeries three were the ones that suggest that the child Aurora be taken from her parents to be raised in the woods, hidden and protected from Maleficent until her sixteenth birthday. The locating of the baby was Maleficent's greatest problem in the original and yet here she seems to be the only guardian that the child has growing up, making contact with her so often that Aurora calls her ‘godmother’. My disappointment throughout the film deepened as the story continued. I watched my favourite childhood villain dumbed down to "Hell hath no fury than a woman scorned, until she finds a meaningful relationship with the one that she’s cursed." Though the story was disappointing, I would give points to Jolie’s acting within the film. As Maleficent, she does have the look of the sorceress and she must be commended on taking the tone of the original voice in the Disney film. The director, Robert Stromberg, was correct in choosing Jolie, and it would be hard for anyone else to carry that role in the same way that she has. The real scenestealer was in fact from the bird, Diaval (played by Sam Riley). It was only a small part in the Disney film but this time around he got more credit for his work, and Riley played it very well.
As for production value, it was good for what they managed to fit in the film. However, the CGI and special FX were heavily relied upon, with almost every scene having an element that had been noticeably worked on. The final edit seemed to be only the parts that were familiar from the Disney film or that could prove that they had a budget to use. This made the final product of Maleficent feel rushed. They attempted to tell as much of the story in such a tight little time frame, that they could not possibly manage to live up to the original.
This review first appeared online at This Is Film.
