Angelina Jolie works her magic in Maleficent

BY THE twenty-minute mark of Maleficent, it looks for all the world as if Angelina Jolie has bet her long-awaited movie comeback on the wrong horse.

MALEFICENT (M)

First Look review

LEIGH PAATSCH

STAR RATING : ***

BY THE twenty-minute mark of Maleficent, it looks for all the world as if Angelina Jolie has bet her long-awaited movie comeback on the wrong horse.

The scripting coughs, splutters, and seldom makes much sense. The special-effects work borders on terrible. What should be a finely wrought fairytale adventure for all ages is fast becoming a feelbad action flick nobody could possibly love.

And then, in the space of just a few scenes, the movie rights itself from its rickety beginning. The timeless appeal of the classic Sleeping Beauty fairytale belatedly kicks in, and Maleficent steadily grows in stature from there.

The confidence, elegance and mischievous capacity to deceive that clearly bolster the best stretches of the film are drawn from Jolie herself.

Casting her spell ... Angelina Jolie in Maleficent.

Though it has been a long and personally eventful time for Jolie since she last stood before a movie camera - 2010’s The Tourist, to be exact - the iconic star has lost none of her charismatic screen presence.

Nor her fierce ability to force an otherwise average film to become something better than it should be.

This big-budget Walt Disney Pictures project is being promoted by the company as “a live-action re-imagining” of their 1959 animated adaptation of Sleeping Beauty.

Reports from behind the scenes hinted at several problems plaguing the production, and they are clearly there for all to see. (And sometimes, not see: some key 3D sequences dissolve into a sludgy blur if they get too visually “busy.”)

Family affair ... Angelina Jolie as Maleficent, left, in a scene with her daughter Vivienne Jolie-Pitt, portraying Young Aurora, in a scene from Maleficent.

Jolie plays the title character, a fairy warrior princess looking for revenge on the soldier king (Sharlto Copley) who was once her boyfriend.

With her ex newly married and celebrating the birth of his first child, Maleficent casts an unbreakable curse on the infant.

Should the fair Aurora (Elle Fanning) prick her finger on a spinning wheel before she turns 16 years of age, she will lapse into a coma that can only end with a kiss of true love.

Once the delightful Fanning joins Jolie at the forefront of proceedings, the sincerely vibrant chemistry of the pair lifts the film out of a rut of its own making.

Aussie in action ... Former Home and Away star Brenton Thwaites and Elle Fanning in Maleficent.

Aurora accidentally crosses paths with Maleficent, and believes her to be some kind of guardian angel. A bond develops between the embittered fairy and the innocent teen that soon has Maleficent considering lifting that famous curse.

What a shame she made it truly unbreakable, huh?

Forgive this production its shoddy start - Maleficent still many go down in history as the cheapest-looking $200 million movie ever shot - and it will very gradually begin paying the viewer back in kind.

The all-important finale summons tension, thrills and a moving majesty that most would have thought impossible just an hour earlier.

Maleficent is now showing in Australian cinemas.