ALL’S FAIRY IN LOVE AND WAR
LOVE conquers fear and intolerance twice upon a time in director Joachim Ronning’s fantastical sequel based on characters from Disney’s 1959 animation Sleeping Beauty and Charles Perrault’s fairy tale La Belle Au Bois Dormant.
Stuffed to the seams with digitally rendered creatures, Maleficent: Mistress Of Evil is slow-cooked to the same family-friendly recipe as the first film and underscores the empowerment of female characters in breathlessly staged action sequences.
Women resolutely hold sway in a script co-written by Linda Woolverton, Noah Harpster and Micah Fitzerman-Blue, which spares no expense with lavish spectacle but is thrifty with character development and plot twists.
Angelina Jolie reprises her role as the winged warrior reborn by motherly love. She’s more reactive and less imposing in the sequel but snags a few deliciously droll one-liners like when Maleficent is greeted by a baying mob of weaponised townsfolk and cackles, “Pitchforks? Humans are hilarious!”
Special effects overload, the scourge of modern blockbusters,
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impacts the final 30 minutes and dilutes the impact of pivotal scenes of self-sacrifice and devotion.
The heart-warming redemption of dark fairy Maleficent (Jolie) has been lost to the sands of time.
Once again, she is the shadowy villain of nervously whispered legends in the human world.
Magical creatures continue to live in harmony on the Moors, where Princess Aurora (Elle Fanning) blossoms in her role as queen of the enchanted realm with guidance from adopted mother Maleficent and shape-shifting henchman Diaval (Sam Riley).
Aurora’s sweetheart Prince
Phillip (Harris Dickinson) goes down on bended knee and the princess accepts his proposal.
Their union promises to bridge the divide between the Moors and humankind.
Philip’s parents, King John (Robert Lindsay) and Queen Ingrith (Michelle Pfeiffer), invite Aurora, Maleficent and Diaval to their castle to celebrate the engagement. SWEET, heartfelt romantic comedy. After a hard day’s night of gigging, singer-songwriter Jack Malik (Himesh Patel) cycles home to his parents (Sanjeev Bhaskar, Meera Syal). He collides with a bus during a 12-second blackout when a nasty bout of pop culture amnesia ripples across the universe, erasing all memory of The Beatles.
Jack regains consciousness in hospital and discovers that no one – except for him – remembers The Fab Four. With a little help from friends including Ellie (Lily James), Jack becomes a viral sensation by passing off The Beatles’ back catalogue as his own words of love.
Download and stream from October 21 and available from November 4 on DVD/Blu-ray. Maleficent is reluctant to accept.
“Why on earth would I go?” she scoffs.
“Because his mother wishes to meet mine,” sweetly counters Aurora.
The two tribes declare an uneasy truce over dinner, until a member of the royal household falls victim to Maleficent’s sleeping curse.
Aurora’s allegiances are tested as Queen Ingrith declares war on the fairy folk and raises an army led by captain of the royal guards, Percival (David Gyasi).
Maleficent: Mistress Of Evil is an impressively staged but emotionally lightweight second chapter in Aurora’s coming of age, which introduces us to a hidden kingdom of dark fairies reminiscent of Pandora in Avatar.
Fanning radiates sweetness while Pfeiffer looks lustrous as she slinks through a narrative laden with predictable betrayals and hardfought absolution.
Riley and Dickinson, replacing Brenton Thwaites as Aurora’s strapping love interest, are largely surplus to requirements as Ronning seeks a well-trodden path to the fabled land of happy ever afters.
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FOURTH instalment of the festive comedies. Syrian boy Doru (Brian Bartle) and his father (Ramin Karimloo) arrive in Britain in search of a better life. The boy is separated from his old man and ends up homeless in Coventry where social worker Miss Shelly (Helen George) places him with a foster mother (Meera Syal) and enrols Doru at St Bernadette’s Primary School. Doru arrives as Mr Johnson (Daniel Boys) and his class are auditioning for a rock opera. Teaching assistant Mr Poppy (Simon Lipkin) takes Doru under his wing and kindles a friendship between the refugee and wealthy boy Barnaby (Rupert Turnbull).
Download and stream from October 21 and available from October 28 on DVD/Blu-ray.