Maleficent is just as magnificent
Review Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (PG, 118 mins) Directed by Joachim Ronning Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett
★★★★1⁄2
I’ll tell anyone who cares that my favourite Disney movie of the past few decades by far is 2014’s Maleficent. I turned up to that film expecting plenty of spectacular visuals in the service of Angelina Jolie giving her own rendition of a typical Disney ‘‘bad witch’’.
But Maleficent delivered something far more. Beneath the action, adventure, laughs and – yes – spectacular visuals, there was some indelibly smart storytelling going on.
Rather than a simple tale of good versus evil, Maleficent examined the whole concept of witches in folk traditions and came back with a story that deftly upended all of our expectations of how a Disney film featuring one might play out.
At the time I called it a ‘‘feminist reclamation of an entire fairy tale tradition’’, which still sounds about right today.
So, I walked into Maleficent: Mistress of Evil just a little apprehensive.
The trailer seems to promise a far more conventional story than the first film delivered. And I worried that, not for the first time, a poor sequel was about to undermine my love for an original. I needn’t have.
Maleficent: Mistress of Evil demands that you have seen the first film, to keep up with who is who and why Princess Aurora (Elle Fanning) refers to Jolie’s towering, bat-winged and vaguely demonic creation as ‘‘God Mother’’.
But, if you have seen the first (or are happy to be baffled for the first 20 minutes), I reckon you’ll find this Maleficent is in many ways an even better film than the first.
Returning writer Linda Woolverton (Mulan, The Lion King,
Alice in Wonderland) has a better grasp of fairy tale mechanics than anyone else in the business. So she knows exactly what rules to break and how. The real force of darkness here is not Jolie’s Maleficent, but rather Michelle Pfeiffer’s Queen Ingrith, chewing the scenery as the magnificently Machiavellian mother of the toothsome young Prince who Aurora is set to marry.
A campaign of lies and disinformation pits Aurora against her God Mother, leaving Maleficent’s domain defenceless in the face of Ingrith’s armies.
What ensues is an occasionally quite intense, but always fantastical deep dive into a whole pool of mythology, with a lightly spun message woven in for those who wish to hear it, of how the lies of our rulers can turn us against nature and our neighbours.
And why not? There’s enough diversity on screen here to trigger the thin-skinned little men of the commentariat so thoroughly they may never recover.
Maleficent: Mistress of Evil isa very well assembled pile of fun. At different moments it reminded me of everything from Avatar to Game of Thrones. Like the 6-year-olds sitting next to me, I pretty much loved every minute of it.