Angelina Jolie’s Malificent defanged in disapointing return
Even the fillmakers seem confused in this muddled sequel to Disney’s revisionist 2014 spin on the Sleeping Beauty legend
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MALEFICENT: MISTRESS OF EVIL
Two and a half stars
Director: Joachim Ronning
Starring: Angelina Jolie, Michelle Pfeiffer, Elle Fanning
Rating: PG
Running time: 119 minutes
Verdict: If it’s not a fairytale, then what is it? Even the filmmakers are confused
Black is the new white in Maleficent: Mistress Of Evil — so long as moviegoers are prepared to overlook Aurora’s diaphanous pink wedding dress.
Elle Fanning’s innocent flowerchild is cast from a depressingly familiar mould in this muddled, wildly uneven sequel to Disney’s revisionist 2014 spin on the Sleeping Beauty legend.
Alongside a feisty Polynesian princess such as Moana, for example, Aurora feels like a rather slight and unfortunate throwback. (Her prince, played by Harris Dickinson, is similarly wet and ineffectual). But perhaps that’s the point.
In Mistress of Evil, Aurora and Phillip are just kids, catalysts, pawns. In this story, the power players are the women who raised them.
So far, so promising.
Angelina Jolie’s first take on wicked fairy godmothery captured a volatile, incandescent state somewhere between malevolence and magnificence. The name said it all.
And the original film made it clear that for generations, storytellers had been focusing on the wrong character.
There are glimpses of that groundbreaking shift in the sequel — in a close-up of the black stubble at the base of Maleficent’s wings, for example, or in her angry, fluorescent green outbursts.
But for most of the film, the titular character is restrained by the narrative equivalent of the black scarf she is persuaded to cover her horns with during a visit to her respective in-laws.
Repeated “humorous” references to Maleficent’s inability to smile are pretty much all Jolie has to work with.
To all intents and purposes, the character has been defanged.
Only in the final scenes — which echo Sigourney Weaver’s primordial struggle in the Aliens franchise — does Maleficent really get to let rip.
And there are moments in this terrible, thrilling manifestation of maternal love that suggest what might have been.
Instead, we are saddled with a tired and predictable plot in which Michelle Pfeiffer’s bejewelled “white witch”, Queen Ingrith, is reimagined as the villain.
“This is no fairytale,” the embittered matriarch snarls fairly early on in the piece.
And she’s not kidding.
Apart from a romantic, bookend wedding — and the comic relief provided by a bunch of helium-voiced, Groot-like woodland creatures that inhabit Maleficent’s Moors — Mistress Of Evil is one, long, and at times rather a grim, slogging match between good and evil.
There’s a truly chilling scene in which the elves and fairies and tree creatures are herded into a church that basically becomes a gas chamber.
One might argue that the film is breaking new ground in terms of its gender bias — Mistress of Evil is definitely not a “chick flick”.
But while the extended battle sequences mark a significant departure from your average princess movie, the action choreography is dull, and the characters are cliched.
It appears that having created such a deliciously dangerous character in the original film, no one knows quite what to do with her.
What a waste!
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