"Maleficent"

Title: Maleficent
Director: Robert Stromberg
Writers: Linda Woolwerton, Charles Perrault, J &W Grimm, Joe Rinaldi
Category: Action,  Adventure, Family
Duration: 97 min
Rate:

Once again, this will not be an impartial review..I REPEAT...THIS WILL NOT BE AN IMPARTIAL REVIEW.

So here it is..I'm a huge fan of Angelina Jolie, I love her movies, I love her family, I'm even more in love with her Partner, Brad Pitt, and above all I love her commitment to every and any humanitarian cause.
So, image my state when news broke out that she was going to play THE BEST VILLAIN ON EARTH ever written by the Grimm brothers or any other fairy tales writer.

My excitement was over the roof when the first pics from the set went out on the internet, I was beyond myself, even the famous theme song remade by Lana del Rey was perfect.

So I had a lot of expectations and after watching it, I was satisfied with it.

Firstly the plot. Everyone's first thought was "oh no another movie reboot of the sleeping beauty" well they were WRONG. As the title might suggest, the movie is about Maleficent, her story and the reason why she becomes the best villain everyone was so scared of. As usual, I don't want to spoil anyone so this is all I'm going to say about the plot itself, it still has all of the protagonist of the original fairy tale, but now the POV is Maleficent's.
Angelina was perfect in this role. Even the makeup, the contact lens and the high and Lady Gagaish cheekbones weren't enough to mask her natural beauty. She was glacial and austere, just to hide a broken heart. The most perfect scenes were the ones with her little daughter, who was playing little Aurora. In those moments you are not watching Maleficent and Aurora, you are witnessing a normal day in the Jolie-Pitt household. It melted my heart all together.

Since the realm is supposed to be peaceful and enchanted at the beginning and cold and frightening for the rest of the movie, a great deal of work was on the CGI team, guided by Robert Stromberg on his first experience as a director in this movie but with a strong background as a multi-awarded Art director in different movies like Alice in Wonderland and Avatar. Thanks to his expertise and the competence of his team the 3D aspect of the movie was visually great, the colors were bright and cheerful in the first half of the movie and dark and vibrant in the second half, according to the mode of the main character and the progression of the story. All the magical creature were created in details without being too fake, apart from the 3 fairies who looked ugly in their CGI miniature, but that's because they had to recreate the facial expressions and features of the three actresses who portrayed the human size ones.

Furthermore, in every scene there was always an underlying element of comedy, which prevents the movie to be too serious.

However, this film got a lot of criticism for the ending, which I'm not going to describe. What I'm going to say about it is that it's really different from the original story. But different doesn't always mean bad or wrong. Therefore, to me, it was a nice way to end the story.
A small part of it was even tasteful and clever because in a way it challenged the ever present notion that to save the day we only need a Prince Charming (by the way the only complain that I have to make on this movie is that Prince Philip was forever ruined for me, he looked like one of the One Direction's guys and I WAS SO DISAPPOINTED, insert here memories of a handsome man on a horse completely shattered).

All in all, even though Maleficent's evilness was in a way diminished a little bit, she still remains the best Disney villain, and this movie made me love her even more.

Till next time,

Fred

Here the trailer of the movie: