LA Movie Review- Maleficent

   A new spin on The Sleeping Beauty story isn't enough to describe Maleficent. No, this is more than that. This movie is a fairy tale where our protagonist is both hero and villain. She's someone who stood for good, was scorned and lost her way. But, just as Professor X taught us in X-Men: Days Of Future Past, just because someone stumbles, loses their way, it doesn't mean they are lost forever. Now it may seem like I wrote that in simply because I wanted to quote X-Men, and in a way you're right, it also applies to this movie in a surprising way.

   Making his directorial debut is Robert Stromberg. Robert came from a background in visual effects and he plays to his strengths with Maleficent. He creates this magical  fairy tale land for the characters to live in. He does go a bit overboard with the visual effects. For example, the fairies in this movie looked absolutely ridiculous. They looked like cartoon characters, and I know that seems paradoxical to say, but  they really didn't work well. Even worse was when the fairies transformed into humans, if every human was a member of the Three Stooges. I will hold off on the bad elements of the movie, so I can acknowledge the best part of the movie; Angelina Jolie. 

Jolie as Maleficent

   Angelina Jolie is really good in this movie. Her performance here was the definition of having fun with a character. You could tell Angelina Jolie was having a good time playing the character. She brought a lot of different emotions to the character and kept her from ever being a full on hero or a full on villain. She was a sympathetic character and one you could root for. Sharlto Copely played the true villain of the film. He has also played villains in his last few films such as Old boy and Elysium. Way to diversify Sharlto. He was fine in the movie. Nothing really stood out as good or bad in his performance.

Elle Fanning as Princess Aurora

   Elle Fanning didn't really have much to do in the movie. Her take on Princess Aurora was the one note, happy-all-the-time sort of girl. Sam Riley played Maleficent's right hand man in the movie. He was serviceable in the movie.

   This movie does it's job as a typical kid's movie. It entertains for an hour and a half and ends. I like that about this movie. It doesn't overstay its welcome by being longer than it needed to be. It isn't too painful to watch because of the run time. This isn't the best movie of the summer, but it isn't the worst either. Maleficent works as a family film. I enjoyed this movie for what it was, but I won't be running back to go see it.

3/5