My daughter dragged me to this movie for a second time yesterday, and while it was generally enjoyable the first time I saw it, this time a lot of plot holes became brutally evident and I had to keep reminding myself it was meant for children so I wouldn’t get too angry.
Since this will contain spoilers I should probably warn you up front about that but I won’t.
Strangely the first thing that really stood out to me, was that there is a battle sequence near the beginning. Despite being tamed down action, there was more onscreen violence in this one scene than in all of the poorly-made and watered-down “Hunger Games” movies combined. So that was a clear point in the movie’s favour.
That being said, this war begins because a greedy King decides he wants to take over this magical land and wages war on them. Apparently this King has never heard of sending a scout in first to get intel, or doing any sort of pre-emptive strategical planning, instead he comes out to a place for whose inhabitants he has no information about, with an army behind him.
Moving on…
There are two very good things about this movie before I get to the main problems.
1. Angelina Jolie. She was actually very believable in a generally preposterous film. She felt genuine from start to finish and at the same time revitalized my interest in seeing her naked (I’ll probably be looking for an old copy of Gia when I have a moment).
2. The music score. I actually thought I was listening to a James Horner score (with smoother edges) while listening to it, but it turned out to be James Newton Howard. It was a tad over the top at times, but generally was a big compliment to the film.
Perhaps the biggest sin this movie makes is trying to stay too close to the original Sleeping Beauty story… especially since the last line of the movie tells us that up until now we have been told the wrong story (more on that shortly). So certain things become a little bit contrived to try to make it fit in with some of the “iconic” Sleeping Beauty moments.
So this lad named Stephan stumbles into the mystical realm and meets Maleficent where they fall in love. But he decides that living in a castle is more valuable to him than spending his life with Maleficent and leaves her. He’s a dummy but there are lots of dummies in the world so that’s perfectly plausible.
After the King is mortally wounded in the previously mentioned war, he tells his minions that whomever kills Maleficent will earn his crown. Stephan uses this as inspiration to betray the one he formerly loved. But he cannot bring himself to kill her, only chops off her wings to pretend he killed her. And that’s where the real problems begin…
Shortly after his coronation, King Stephan announces to the kingdom that his child will be born, and who shows up to crash the celebration, but Maleficent… the one that he had claimed to have killed in order to win the crown, so shouldn’t he be immediately stripped of his royalty?
Once his daughter is cursed the King decides that the best course of action is to send his baby into the care of three inept fairies whom he just met and didn’t seem to even like. This was a tough one for me to get past as a parent. Even when my kids are being a handful I wouldn’t be that neglectful.
Most of the special effects are passable in this movie, but the 3 CGI fairies (or midgets as my son called them) animation was shameful. Disney should be embarrassed by how bad they are. Especially since the animated versions of these fairies are directly juxtaposed with their human counterparts.
As Aurora grows up for some reason Maleficent decides to keep a close watch on her and makes up for the shortcomings of the fairies by making sure the child is safe, not really sure why she would do this to a child she just cursed.
This leads to the ultimate meeting of Maleficent and Aurora. It begins with a brief battle scene that feels like it was inserted solely to accelerate the pace of the film. But then Maleficent brings Aurora to the enchanted realm while she is under a sleep-induced spell. Aurora wakes up and instead of being confused or groggy or anything a normal human being would, she is immediately excited to be in this strange land which just comes off as bizarre.
A sort of mother-daughter relationship forms between the two of them, which is fairly nice but perhaps a little too rushed in an already short film. Then comes Prince Philip out of nowhere, a kid who looks like a member of One Direction, but my 11-year-old daughter thought he was ugly.
Supposedly Philip is en route to the castle when he happens upon Aurora, and after their cutesy meeting says that he will come back after he’s been to the castle.
Bla bla bla, Aurora learns about her past, that she’s cursed by Maleficent and returns to the castle where her father lovingly greets her by sticking her in room from which she easily escapes and pricks her finger on a spindle that exists for reasons unknown.
Maleficent who now has bonded with the girl decides she must try to break the sleeping spell with the help of the prince, so she puts him under a sleep spell after he returns to the forest seeking out Aurora (presumably now on his way home from his trip to the castle).
Maleficent and her man-bird sneak into the castle with ease toting along “sleeping handsome”, then basically dump him into Aurora’s lap. When Prince Philip comes to and realizes he’s in the castle he says this is where he was meant to be… but wait, wasn’t the only reason he was in the forest when he was captured because he was coming back FROM the castle?
Anyway the Prince gives her a creepy kiss which to nobody’s surprise does nothing, and the big twist is that Maleficient must give her the magical kiss (at which point I’m ashamed to say my son shouted out “she’s a lesbian!” in the theater).
As Aurora and Maleficent try to escape the castle we get into the mandatory final showdown, which is all well and good except for one major problem… during the battle Aurora hides in a random room in the castle, which conveniently, of every room in this massive castle, happens to be the very room where Maleficent’s wings are kept. Apparently the writers missed the lesson where you are taught that lucky coincidences should NEVER save the heroes in the end.
The rest plays out as you would expect with the evil King being killed, Maleficent being redeemed and Aurora with her loving Prince becomes the queen of the two realms. But like I mentioned at the top, we are told by the narrator that now you know the “real” story. But hold on a minute… if this is the real story, who would have documented and passed down the inaccurate version that had been told up to this point?
The evil King is dead so he and his followers wouldn’t have.
Aurora is the loved queen now so her loyal subjects wouldn’t have.
Certainly Maleficent would not have shined a bright light on her misdeeds
The only solution to this problem that my kids and I could come up with was this, the subject matter for what should perhaps be the plot of Maleficent 2: Philip has an affair with Maleficent and then he and Aurora go through an ugly divorce and custody battle, during which time Philip brainwashes his children into believing that Aurora is brainless and Maleficent is a heartless bitch and then they pass on that version of the story through time.
Either that is the plan or the writers just had no idea what they were doing.
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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles review: not to spoil it, but it sucked balls!
Keith Dumbuck 