Maleficent (2014)
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Maleficent Movie Review
Maleficent is a 2014 fantasy film from Disney directed by Robert Stromberg and starring Angelina Jolie and Elle Fanning. It’s such a frustratingly bad movie.
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“Then you’ll be afraid“
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I hated this film. I put off watching it from 2014 until now when I finally decided to at least give it a shot, but it was so bad that my every instinct was correct previously. With me being a huge ‘Sleeping Beauty’ fan, this was honestly painful to watch and downright offensive.
So Maleficent herself, one of the most powerful Disney villains of all time, is reduced to a motherly figure here where she acts as a godmother to Aurora. What?! It plays out exactly as it sounds – horrible! Yes, the relationship between the two is sweet, but it’s so ill-conceived as is this whole movie that I simply could not give it a pass.
Linda Woolverton wrote this screenplay and it most definitely shows as it’s full of feminist agenda and just aggressively feminist to the point of becoming laughable and downright offensive how unsubtle it is. There is not one good or memorable male character here with most of them being downright evil whereas the women are all great people.
But I didn’t mind that as much even though it was so wrong because I expect that from this period’s PC Hollywood, but the movie itself is bad whether or not it had those tendencies. The first and last act are somewhat memorable, but the rest of the movie is stretched out and honestly quite boring.
Angelina Jolie is certainly very good in the role. I dislike her tremendously, but here she gave probably her finest performance and I have to praise her for that. Elle Fanning is also pretty good and her Aurora is actually quite likable. But Sharlto Copley as villainous Stefan was so over-the-top and this character really angered me the most. As for the fairies, the less said about them the better, as they are incompetent and so bad.
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Maleficent features terrific special effects, there is no arguing that. The film has too many effects for sure, but they are certainly wonderful to witness and quite colorful. I also liked some designs, the costumes are great and the score is solid. But the dialogue, action and the overall storyline were all so bad leading to probably the worst live-action Disney remake so far.
With a horrible script, one-note characters and an insurmountable amount of terrible choices being made, Maleficent truly is the worst Disney live-action remake so far. Yes, Angelina Jolie is admittedly very good in the role, the costumes are great and the special effects are strong, but the action, dialogue and especially its male characters are so bad. The film’s aggressive, unsubtle feminism was its downfall, but it was so ill-conceived from the start. I am a huge fan of the original film so honestly watching this remake was not only offensive, but downright painful.
