Thursday 24 July 2014

A mini (or not so mini) review of Maleficent from a die-hard Disney fan of Sleeping Beauty

I thought I would like to write a mini review on Maleficent seeing as I went and saw it with Autumn and Eden on Monday night.
Now, you should know....Sleeping Beauty has always been my favourite Disney Princess movie. Until Tangled came out. Then Tangled replaced it but out of the classics, it has always been my favourite. I remember getting it on video for my sixth birthday after Mum had searched and searched for it, she almost didn't find it. Except she went shopping for groceries and found it at Woolies. And she found it! :D So I was one happy little girl.
Spoilers ahead guys! :D

In the past two years there have been two movies that I've watched are Maleficent and Snow White and the Huntsman. They both had their good points, but they also had their bad points.
Also, take note that I knew what happened at the end, as I read spoilers beforehand. :P
Bad points:
Maleficent has garned a 45 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
pixies maleficent poster

And I can understand that. I found that it switched from scenes that were light and humorous (with the fairies) mostly, to rather dark, scary, music based scenes that I found rather dark. I probably would have been better if I was home watching it on our T.V. but seeing as it wasn't, I was quite a bit freaked out. Maleficent is originally (Disney version) a very scary villain and it proved to be so. Until she started turning good. King Stefan was an absolutely horrible guy who needed a mother 'very, very badly' I feel like such a film critic because, I was thinking during/after the end finale when there's the fight/battle 'They could have put some really epic lines into that to make it a bit more wowish.' But they didn't. It was simply fighting. And then Stefan died! Hooray!
Some of the start of the storyline was 'typical' stuff. True love's kiss on her sixteenth birthday blah blah blah.......
I found just the character Maleficent, from about the time Stefan cuts off  her wings, to when she starts to soften with Aurora, a very dark character and I found her magic scary as well. But that's really no different to the Disney movie (once again) except that that was cartoon, so it was a little less worrisome. And it didn't have such loud music.

Stefan I hate. It's good that you died. And you don't slap fairies. No matter how angry you get!
My other big problem with the movie is I'll probably never be able to listen to 'Once Upon a Dream' the Disney version without thinking of the terrible (Autumn classed it as jazz) version that plays at the credits and I don't think that I'll ever be able to watch my favourite Princess movie (one of them, that is) without thinking of the large differences between the two movies.
Sooooooooooooo irresponsible! 
Oh! And the fairies! How horrible can you be and you should soooooooo totally not be looking after a baby if you don't even know how to feed it! Of course, that and the fact that this beautiful little baby just had a curse laid upon it actually got me started thinking about abortion and how people don't want little babies. And so that was actually making me a bit teary and upset. Plus, they were rather pettish. Mostly there for comic relief.
On the bright side:
I enjoyed seeing Maleficent as a little girl and the fairy folk of the moors were nice, too.

I really did like Aurora although, she was a little 'airy-fairy' but she also played her part beautifully and how she thought Maleficent was her Godmother? Such a good idea. :)
My favourite character: Diaval! Maleficent's shape-shifting raven. He was so tender-hearted and sweet. And some of the stuff he says really made me laugh, like when they're lugging Prince Phillip all over the place. :)
I wish that there had been more of Prince Phillip in this. Now, I'm one of those people who simply hates! those stupid romances in movies that they squeeze in because they simply have to have a romantic kiss at the end, even if there seems no real point to it because there was no character-building between the couple.

That's what it was like in a lot of movies. Seeing as he didn't end up breaking the curse (I told you there were spoilers) I was glad when he showed up at the end because it looked like he and Aurora might actually take it a little more slow but still end up together! :D I wouldn't describe him as handsome, but more like cute. I wasn't sure that he was even going to turn up! but I think when he did I started smiling. :D
Maleficent was an alright character but her best parts were with Aurora. :)
Like this first one. :)
What else should I talk about before I finish this? It's a dark movie. If and when we get it on DVD Rogan won't be watching it because it is rather dark.
I think all three of us girls were getting a bit teary at the end. It was awesome because we were the only people in the cinema so we could discuss it as we watched and Autumn and Eden did a capital job asking me if I was alright. :)
So in short: My favourite Princess movie was ruined. But not entirely. It was ok. But not terrific. I wouldn't go and see it at the cinema again, but I'd maybe watch it when it comes out on DVD.
So that's my rather mixed up opinion on Maleficent everybody! I hope you enjoyed reading my ramblings! :D
Anyway I'd better go.

God Bless

2 comments:

  1. Enjoyed your review! I'm always way behind on new movies. I didn't even know Maleficent was a remake of Sleeping Beauty!? Interesting . . . I thought it looked rather creepy. That's really nice that you and your sisters had the theater all to yourselves! I would LOVE to be able to watch the Extended Editions of Lord of the Rings in the theaters. Theaters are so intense. I'm totally unused to surround sound, so during the Gollum's cave sequence in An Unexpected Journey, I kept (inwardly) freaking out at all the weird noises behind me, until I realized that--oh, duh, there are speakers *behind* me, too :-P But it's cool!

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    1. Thank you! Yes, it was a bit creepy and I wasn't quite sure what it was about because I hadn't even seen the trailer. Yeah, it was interesting. I've only had that happen once before when I went and saw Amazing Spiderman 2. :)
      I would so totally like to go and see the extended editions at the movies as well. Well, even the theatrical cuts seeing as I was rather too young to watch LOTR when it first came out. :)

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