Maleficent: Movie Review

I really wanted to love Maleficent. I was so excited about this movie. Sleeping Beauty was my all-time favorite Disney Princess movie for years and years and years... until Tangled came out. For those who know me, you know what a monumental thing it was that Tangled replaced Sleeping Beauty in my affections. I don't make favorites easily or lightly, and I don't let go of them easily.A few of the reasons I loved Sleeping Beauty so much include (but are not limited to): the prince actually has lines, and a name, and he can dance, and sing, and he fights a dragon! I mean, it's hard for princes like the ones in Cinderella or even Little Mermaid to top that. Also, the music is beautiful. Also, the bad guy. I mean, Maleficent is just such a good villain. She's purely evil, spiteful, and a little on the snarky side - pulling off the villain with an impressive finesse, especially for a cartoon character. And she turns into an awesome dragon.So, I was excited about the movie: Maleficent. But I was also a little on the hesitant side, because I was worried "they" would change her story, that they would try to make her into a sympathetic character, that her villainy would be somehow justified by something in her past.I was right to worry. They did even more than I feared. They completely de-villain-ified Maleficent.I'm going to try to do this without spoilers, but if I find myself about to give too much away, I'll let you know.I suppose it's only fair to begin with the things I liked about the movie:1. The world. This movie is just beautiful. It is a fantasy-lover's day-dream come true.2. The one line that I felt Maleficent pulled off well: "What?" - sorry, you'd have to see the movie to understand that one, but if you do watch it, you won't miss it.Unfortunately, that's about it for the things I liked. Moving on, to things I didn't like:1. The opening 10 or so minutes. The entire backstory of the movie is narrated in voice over. This is not always a bad thing, Jackson pulled it off in Fellowship of the Ring. But if you're going to narrate the backstory, you can't say anything that is not obvious to the audience. So, we meet Maleficent, a young, human-sized fairy - who is incredibly sweet, and startlingly adorable despite the enormous horns growing out of her head. Then we are introduced to Stephan, a young boy who sneaks into fairy-land to steal a glowing rock. However, upon meeting Maleficent, he gives the rock back and the two become friends. Then the narrator tells us that greed and ambition live in Stephan's heart. I don't like being TOLD what I should think of a character, especially when I have seen no outwards signs of those character traits. It just feels... lazy, I guess.2. The acting. I may become truly unpopular by saying this, but Angelina Jolie is not the best actor. Sure, she LOOKS like the cartoon version of Maleficent, but she cannot carry a movie. Some actors just can't. This doesn't mean I don't like her or I don't think she can act at all, I thought she did a great job as Frankie in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, and she did a good job in Gone in Sixty Seconds, but again, those are much smaller roles, and she did not have to carry the movie. She's fun in the Lara Croft/Tomb Raider movies, but I think we can all agree that those are campy, ridiculous films, that are mostly just fun because they're a sort of silly knock-off of Indiana Jones... I mean, right? Angelina just can't carry a movie... and this proves true yet again in Maleficent. I walked away from the movie not really caring about any of the characters. Even in the most emotional part of the movie, I couldn't muster up the energy to care about the horrible betrayal that had just happened to the main character, because it felt so forced, so fake... so much like she was acting.3. The characters. Can we say one-dimensional, much? The characters were all very flat. The king is evil. The "good" fairies are... imbeciles who constantly act like they are drunk. The princess is precocious. And that's where the definitions stop, because that is ALL those characters are. And Maleficent? Well, she was hurt... so she turned around and hurt others.4. The three good fairies. I felt as though this movie took the question, "If the three good fairies couldn't figure out how to bake a birthday cake, then how did Aurora not starve to death before her 16th birthday?" and decided to answer ALL such questions about the potential plot holes in the movie Sleeping Beauty with one simple solution: "The three fairies were morons. It was Maleficent who really looked after her." Which makes about as much sense as the last third of Transformers 4 taking place in a pretend Hong Kong with accidental images of the Sears Tower left un-edited-out in the background.5. Probably my main problem with the movie, however, is the tagline. "Both a hero and a villain." Or, "Evil has a beginning." It's a good concept in theory. I've seen it done well. X-Men: Days of Future Past actually managed it quite well, in a recent example. Darth Vader, I know I overuse him in examples, but I just love him, is another excellent example. Maleficent? Nope. She's only a villain for about 30 seconds. It was as though the writers really wanted her to be the hero, but felt like they HAD to show her as a villain, so they did... rather reluctantly.SPOILER ALERTSeriously, several moments after she lays the curse on the princess, she's helping keep the princess from starving to death, falling off a cliff, and getting lost while wandering in the woods. I mean, what is the point of cursing the princess in the first place if you're then going to protect her for the rest of her life? I just couldn't believe that Maleficent really meant the curse. So instead of a villain-turned-hero story, you have a hero-got-betrayed-threw-a-hissy-fit-sat-on-a-throne-cursed-a-princess-and-then-regretted-it-for-the-rest-of-the-movie story. Which just wasn't as compelling, in my personal opinion.I've seen some people talk about the "redemption" story of Maleficent. And you all know how much I love a good redemption story, but that's the problem here. It's not a redemption story, because the writers didn't make Maleficent a character in need of redemption. She wasn't evil.Meanwhile, the character who truly needed redemption - Stephan - doesn't get it.SPOILERS OVER6. Just as I feared, the writers did, in fact, try to justify Maleficent's behavior. The whole movie seemed to be trying to say, "She was hurt, so it's okay that she's going around hurting others. Until she decides she doesn't want to anymore..." and I just don't buy that. It's not okay to hurt others just because you've been hurt. It's not okay to lash out, subdue an entire race, and curse a baby just because someone rejected you or hurt you, no matter how great of a hurt or how deep of a wound they left, it doesn't justify MORE bad behavior.In general, this whole movie just fell flat. It was an emotionless, powerless, nearly plot-less show filled with an impressive lack of acting and some very pretty CGI. And really, the whole point of the movie was this:And she doesn't even turn into a dragon. What's up with that?I give it one dragon egg.Seriously, if you want to watch a story about a villain becoming a hero, I recommend you rent X-Men: Days of Future Past, instead.