Sleeping Beauty It is amazing how directors-debutants like Stromberg instantly get a blockbuster multi-million dollar budget and a grand cast under their tutelage to make another iconic movie for a studio with a big name-brand. But at least Stromberg had experience with special effects in similar projects, so for the colorfulness and scale of the new Disney fairy tale certainly can not worry.
The very idea of flipping “Sleeping Beauty”, making the villain Maleficent the central character – looks extremely controversial. Now, in the case of commercial success, we clearly will not get rid of Cruella, Ursula, and the Snow Queen with the formation of an offended girl with sub-ziro talents from an outcast to the lord of ice storms and snowstorms. “Maleficent” a third of the story focuses on the childhood and youth of the antagonist, telling about the country of fairies, colorful swamps, turning the story of betrayal into a feminist-man-hating film.
Men here are presented far from in the best light: a humble servant, a greedy traitor, a weak-willed knave prince, aggressive soulless knights ... The theme of love and resurrection kiss, breaking the spell, removed and destroyed, the characters every five minutes repeat the same phrase that love does not exist. While female characters really rule the ball. The story of Maleficent and Aurora, in fact, is not closer to Freudian psychoanalysis, but only a clear example of how a stepmother can truly love and care for someone else’s child.
The script has not a few flaws and attempts not to get out in unideal moments, but to shorten the plot in order to rush to the juicy finale at all times. An hour and a half for such a story, albeit a children's tale, is still not enough. Some of the characters deserved reasons to open up better and get motivation more interesting and believable, especially from Linda Woolverton, screenwriter of Alice, Mulan and The Lion King.
But why all this drama when we have wild black wolves, battle action with live trees, grass snakes, a raven turning into a dragon and many other beautiful special effects. Disney, surprisingly, was able to turn one of the most snotty and vanilla “girl fairy tales” into a modern spectacle, into a fantasy blockbuster, at the level of the second part of “The Chronicles of Narnia” (" Prince Caspian) and “Snow White and the Hunter” (where also the visual feast presses on the script and logic of events, though much sharper than in this picture).
Stromberg got an outstanding cast: Angelina Jolie in the brightest role in her career, incredible young beauties: Ellie Fanning, Juno Temple, Isobel Molloy, Ella Purnell, Elinor Worthington-Cox (by the way, Aurora in early childhood played the daughter of Angelina and Brad Pitt – Vivienne Jolie-Pitt, the only child on the set who was not afraid of Jolie in Maleficent’s makeup). Of the male caste, I want to mention only Sam Riley, a very talented character actor, whose raven Diaval came out many times brighter than the controversial king from Charlotte Copley. For the debut work, the movie is powerful and impressive, for fairy tales from Disney, still weaker than Oz and Alice, but better than all the fabulous projects of rival studios such as Jack with Giants, the endless stream of Snow White and the matured late Potters. And in a year, we will see what the director of “Thora” will do for Disney from “Cinderella”.
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Original