Hot on the heels, well maybe not hot but, of a The Wizard Of Oz where the Wicked Witch of the West is warm and fuzzy and a Snow White where Snow White is a warrior Princess and a The Ice King where the hero is a stinker, comes a Sleeping Beauty where Maleficent isn’t the villain, the King is.
Not for nothing and I do get it, men have been very men to women through the ages, but can’t women be a little more, how you say, thick skinned about it and stop fucking with beloved fairytales. C’mon, there are enough male villains in the world, why switch em on us.
Maleficent is (was?) the villain of “Sleeping Beauty” who, mad because she doesn’t get an invite to the christening, puts a curse on the King and Queen’s daughter Aurora so that on her sixteenth birthday she can prick her finger and fall into a deep an eternal sleep. Except no more, through the wonder of Disney, she is now Angelina Jolie, and a glorious winged specimen of fairydom, who flies around the enchanted forest giving the boot to invading human invaders.
Until one human, a male, betrays her and takes away her wings and becomes King. The King Stefan (played by Sharlto Copley -who looks an awful lot like Harry Dean Stanton) marries a woman he ignores and has a daughter Aurora (played by a beatific Dakota Fanning) who he hands off to three nitwit fairy Godmothers.
Then Maleficent has a change of heart.
This all sounds a little worse than it is, the special effects are gorgeous, the story grabby, and the ending would’ve been very clever if it hadn’t been done earlier this year in “Frozen”. As it is, there is a gentleness to the story as Maleficent learns to forgive that is kinda endearing and the enchanted forest is a wonderful.
Among the many differences between men and women, here is a biggie: men don’t care if women cast them as the villains in fairytales, we’ve seen enough Hallmark Movies to be a little immune to it -though I dread to think of the hullabaloo if they made Nala the villain of “The Lion King”. You can say what you want about men but I wouldn’t be a woman for all the wings in the world.
Grade: B
