Plot: Maleficent is a fairy who lives in this magical realm called The Moors which separates itself from the kingdom of the humans. She befriends and eventually falls in love with a boy named Stephan, but when the human king is dying and declares that the person who kill Maleficent will take his throne, Stephan drugs Maleficent and cuts off her wings and gives them to the king claiming he killed her and thus takes the throne. So when Stephan has a daughter named Aurora, Maleficent puts her on a curse that Aurora will prick her finger on a spinning wheel and forever sleep unless she is given true love's kiss.
So, how was this movie that was trying to give us a very interesting, Wicked-like, point of view of one of the most memorable Disney villains? Well... the key word to that sentence is "try". So what I'm basically saying is that for what it was trying to do in terms of basically giving us a Maleficent version of Wicked, it had some nice ideas - some of it fit and/or was beginning to fit - but unfortunately it was, what I felt, a few re-writes on the script away from really reaching its potential. Like it a lot of moments where it was beginning to be clever and interesting, but their execution of its ideas - while not ' holy crap' awful - either could've been given more time to explain why this is the case or just could've taken a better direction altogether. For example, you have her motive of cursing Aurora because she was in love with Stephan before he cuts off her wings. So with that, she has a more deep and personal reason to curse the baby, compared to her motive in Sleeping Beauty. And that's a good idea. But, then it gets jumbled when you have problems like how they don't really show what makes the human kingdom really hate The Moors - I mean they show that they hate it in the beginning, but their motive is completely non-existent - and to top that off, they don't go into detail as to how that kingdom seemed to corrupt Stephan to the point of taking her wings and then - without spoiling the movie - goes on this one direction for the remainder of the film that, while also a good idea, barely makes a lick of sense. All of this is just stuff from the first half hour of the movie, and it unfortunately continues this path for the remainder of its time. We'll get other ideas like making the raven, Diaval more of a character or the relationship between Maleficent and Aurora that, by concept, could've really strengthened where the movie was going, but either by choosing a poor direction or not allowing those ideas to really breathe, they make the film come out as more of a mess. Now thankfully, the movie doesn't come off as completely awful, because there are some nice elements to the movie despite ideas that just weren't' used all that well. Firstly, there's the style of the CGI. And don't get me wrong, they don't do a swell job in hiding that it's all fake, but at the same time, they stylized it well enough that I still enjoyed it when watching things like the fight in the beginning of the film, or just the creatures in The Moors. And there's of coarse Angelina Jolie as Maleficent. While she obviously is not going quite to big in terms of movement or voice as the Maleficent in the original (yeah I know I'm comparing, but that's kind of unavoidable for this kind of movie), she does hold her own in her performance and does indeed show that she looks the part almost flawlessly.
And that's my review for Maleficent. It does have some decent stylized CGI, a good performance from Angelina Jolie, and as far as story goes, had some ideas that could've worked with some adjustments. But those adjustments were never made, and so while I liked it for what it was trying to do, it still didn't succeed, making the movie a bit of a mess. If you just want a nice time watching a movie, you're probably going to like this fine, but it you wanted something deeper and darker with a well thought out plot, this movie is not really there, so you probably won't care for it.
Rating: 50%
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