Acting: 3.5; Theme: 4.0; Content: 4.5; Language: 5.0; Overall: 3.5

This is the "prequel" to Sleeping Beauty giving the back ground of the evil fairy, Maleficent (Angelina Jolie) and her curse upon Aurora (Elle Fanning), the young princess. There are several key changes in this film that changed the originality of the real Sleeping Beauty classic.

***April 5, 2023*** ( )

PG

A powerful fairy curses a princess.

It's entertaining, but there isn't anything that wasn't much better in Sleeping Beauty. Still, movie producers without ideas of their own could do a lot worse for a source of material to mine. A movie about Maleficent is a great idea. Making her the hero, though, is a terrible idea. They go through all that trouble (ie, the first half of the movie) effectively establishing why she's evil. Then she just stops being evil for no apparent reason. The original Maleficent is one of the most awesome villains of all time, and seeing a version of her that so easily softens is extremely disappointing.

Concept: B
Story: C
Characters: D
Dialog: F
Pacing: C
Cinematography: B
Special effects/design: A
Acting: C
Music: B

Enjoyment: C plus

GPA: 2.2/4 ( )

I wasn't sure what to expect from this film but I enjoyed it. I always quite enjoy these stories which try to rewrite familiar stories whilst making the "bad guy" not so bad but not changing the story. It's clever when done well e.g "Wicked". I didn't find this film fantastic but enjoyable enough. ( )

Maleficent has always been my #1 villainess and thinking back on it, there were a lot of villainesses to choose from. They do something really extraordinary in this movie