Maleficent: Mistress Of Evil review ★★☆☆☆ by Dylan B Jones
It’s been five years since Disney’s kaleidoscopic dive into the world of Maleficent, one of the first of their live-action adaptation/remake/cash cow ventures. Critics were sceptical, but praised Angelina Jolie’s involved performance as the misunderstood faerie queen, and the often boldly dark themes, a bold move for Disney.
The sequel, hitting screens in time for Halloween this month, is not offensively bad – it just lacks lustre. Interestingly, this is a common stumbling block for many adventure style movies right now, and it might be because writers and producers are struggling to hit a tone. Gone are the gung-ho camp days of 90s/early 00s fare like The Mummy. For whatever reason, self-referential unapologetic campness doesn’t seem to be on the cards these days, which is a shame because that’s exactly the thing Maleficent needs.
It’s highly frustrating because with her high shoulder pads and even higher eyebrows, Maleficent is one of Disney’s campest creations (not THE campest – Ursula and Jafar would certainly have something to say about that). The premise of the film even lends itself fabulously to campness – Elle Fanning’s Princess Aurora finds herself engaged to the handsome prince (obvs) and as a result, she and her supernatural stepmother Maleficent are invited to dine at the castle with the king and queen, played by Robert Lindsay and Michelle Pfeiffer.
Angelina Jolie having a sparring match over wine and a hog roast with Michelle Pfeiffer and the dad off of My Family? SURELY it doesn’t get camper than that? Right?! Wrong. Not a single camp line is uttered. Not even a single camp eyebrow raised from Angelina. There were a couple of jibes that elicited vague, indulgent chuckles from the audience, but it felt like the writers were phoning it in.
This half-arsed tone continues for the whole of the movie’s considerable running time. There’s an unnecessarily laborious origins sequence where we learn a little more about the Fey as a species, perhaps meant to endear us a little more to Maleficent as a character – the thing is, we don’t really care about origins. As much as Disney would like to think it is, Maleficent isn’t and never will be a beloved franchise like Lord of the Rings or Star Wars, where audiences want to drink in every detail and every gulp of rich history of the world the characters inhabit. We don’t CARE about where Maleficent’s parents came from. We just want Angelina Jolie being evil for two hours. On that score, the film spectacularly fails – the character of Maleficent hardly does anything evil at all (unless you count briefly suspending a cat in the air – that’s literally the most evil thing she does).
One area the film excels in is special effects – they are stunning, and some real imagination and attention to detail has gone into them, down to the last technicolour petal.
It’s almost as if – with recent works like The Lion King being a good example – Disney are more concerned about technical achievements and looking good, than personality or any real sense of orginality and adventure. Interestingly, that’s also the way the world at large is headed, so it makes total sense. Follow us on Instagram @QXMagazine.
Maleficent: Mistress Of Evil is out now.
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