Somehow, 'Maleficent: Mistress Of Evil' Is A New Movie You Feel Like You've Seen Before
Starring Angelina Jolie, Elle Fanning, Michelle Pfeiffer, Sam Riley, Chiwetel Ejofor, Ed Skrein
PG
Fantasy
Run time: 1 hr, 58 min
Directed by Joachim Ronning
In theaters October 18, 2019
In a post-Breaking Bad world, we are far more open to the concept that the protagonist in a movie may be the villain. We’re used to the idea now of an anti-hero. Which is why the trailer to Maleficent: Mistress of Evil seemed to have potential. Sure, the story had been different before, showing a softer side of the Sleeping Beauty fairy-witch-dragon hybrid, but maybe this time she’d step into the big bad shoes she had originally filled. Unfortunately, somehow, Maleficent herself (Jolie) seems to be a side character in her own tale, and just wavers between two tales to finally combine them at the end.
With her fabulous all-black outfits, giant raven wings, perfect red lipstick and horns, Maleficent sure looks the same as I remember from her earlier movie, but this installment didn’t really remind me anything about her personality. Her goddaughter Aurora (Fanning) is getting engaged and surprise surprise, the dark fairy is not on board. She’s taught how to kinda sorta smile convincingly, how to make nice with the humans she distrusts and how not to cause a scene. Naturally, nothing goes to plan, and the mother of Aurora’s new fiancé (Pfeiffer) goes toe to toe with the horned godmother of the bride-to-be. Somehow, a war is started. Loyalties are tested. Maleficent vanishes (but does she??) and still somehow, the title character says maybe a total of 53 words throughout the entire ordeal.
Everything about this movie seems familiar. There’s an aesthetic that is reminiscent of Snow White and the Huntsman, the love story somehow plays out like the live action Cinderella and if you told me that this entire plot had happened in the previous Maleficent film, I would have been forced to believe you. Every fifth scene feels like it was only done for the IMAX 3D version and is enough to make you dizzy in the regular showing. Sweeping landscape shots that are common in these live action Disney films are overly present in this movie, making me wonder if they were just trying to stretch the movie into its almost two hour run time.
Elle Fanning is perfectly charming as the young Aurora and Angelina Jolie and her prosthetic cheekbones are just as impressive as Maleficent, but other than that, the film just falls a bit flat. The plot follows an incredibly predictable path, and the one moment I was actually surprised by is undone within four minutes. As someone who truly enjoyed the first movie of this name, I had high-ish hopes for this one, but I feel like there wasn’t a story that needed to be told after the close of the initial installment. We had the prequel, it was creative and enjoyable, where this was a bit more of the same, and by the end it’s just a little bit exhausting. I was constantly glancing at my watch to see how far into it we were, and with how slowly it all seemed to move, I’d recommend just watching the first one and enjoying the ingenuity of that one, rather than sighing at the lack of it in Mistress of Evil.