1.5 stars. Rated PG, despite considerable violence and heartbreaking content
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.18.19
Wow. Genocide, in a (supposedly) family-friendly Disney fantasy?
What’s next? Gang rape? Child mutilation?
Uncle Walt must be spinning in his grave.
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| En route to a lavish dinner designed to acquaint Maleficent (Angelina Jolie, center) with her future in-laws, Aurora (Elle Fanning) and Diaval (Sam Riley) can't help thinking that this might be a very, very bad idea. |
What were these people thinking?
Maleficent: Mistress of Evil is a tasteless, mean-spirited, Frankenstein’s monster of a movie: a textbook example of what happens when art is sacrificed on the altar of crass corporate commercialism. It follows 2014’s Maleficent, Disney’s response to Wicked, the stage play with its then-novel origin story of Dorothy Gale’s Wicked Witch of the West. Maleficent, in turn, was the origin story of the evil sorceress who bedeviled Aurora (aka Briar Rose) in Sleeping Beauty.
Which was a reasonable concept, the first time. But scripters Linda Woolverton, Micah Fitzerman-Blue and Noah Harpster have broken faith with the original fairy tale here — indeed, the entire genre — by blending cutesy-poo creatures with horrific violence, in service of a thoroughly unsubtle refrain of “We’ve got to overlook our differences, in order to get along.”
Real-world resonance notwithstanding, that lecture is getting very tiresome.
On top of which, the writers have blatantly borrowed (read: stolen) concepts from all manner of other, far superior fantasy sagas. The result is kitchen-sink overkill, as if dazzling us with a cornucopia of cheerful, colorful beasties will compensate for a story that becomes increasingly grim, depressing and sadistic.
And this is supposed to be for children? The PG rating is reprehensible, and a total lie. Disney should be ashamed.
Perhaps recognizing the folly of the entire production, most of the featured performers don’t bother acting. Angelina Jolie’s line readings are atrocious. Her Maleficent, intended to be intimidating, never rises above the smirking insolence of a star who recognizes that she’s wasting her time (and ours). Elle Fanning goes too far in the other direction; her Aurora is breathlessly melodramatic, her eyes forever wide with overwrought angst.
Harris Dickinson’s Prince Philip is no more than a stalwart hunk; his wooden insincerity is laughably inept. And the three actresses playing the colorful good fairies — transformed here into pixies dubbed Knotgrass (Imelda Staunton), Flittle (Lesley Manville) and Thistlewit (Juno Temple) — are just plain annoying.
Given that most of these actors have done superior work elsewhere, director Joachim Rønning deserves the blame for their poor performances here. He has no feeling for this material, having previously helmed only grim historical sagas — Max Manus: Man of War and Kon-Tiki — and 2017’s ill-advised Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, a similar big-budget franchise flop.
