Magnificent Angie makes a wicked turn
(Blu-Ray: Ster-Kinekor)
If you’re an avid reader of this column (could I see some hands, please?) you’ll remember that I recently reviewed the re-released Blu-ray of Walt Disney’s 1959 animated movie Sleeping Beauty.
It’s never been regarded as one of the master’s greatest works, yet it would be difficult not to concede its visual splendour.
And now, more than half a century later, the creatives over at Disney have focused their attentions on the evil fairy, Maleficent, from that tale – the woman who had cursed a young princess into a semi-comatose state that would earn her the moniker Sleeping Beauty.
This time around, however, the movie isn’t animated, although it takes place in a magical world that owes a whole lot to 3D computer wizardry. (Allow me to stick my neck out and venture that this is possibly the most visually ravishing 3-D movie you’ll see this year.)
This revisionist take on the classic children’s fairy tale gives Maleficent a back-story that stretches to her childhood, and shows that she had been quite a sweet and normal supernatural being to start with.
But, when power-lust had driven her once-boyfriend to a crushing act of betrayal, Maleficent had summoned all her forces and immersed herself in a dark, vengeful existence as Queen of the Moors.
Thus was the tone set for this enchantress’s emotionally tortured adult life… My initial reaction to these conceits was that they were not in keeping with the look-and-feel of the familiar film that so many of us had grown up with.
As the tale progressed, however, I became increasingly swept up in its brooding majesty, and suspect that you might, too.
The 3-D Blu-ray disc is accompanied, in this release, by a 2-D version, for those who might strangely prefer the flat rendition of the story, and this second disc also carries a respectable collection of behind-the-scenes featurettes (which we have, by now, come to expect with Disney home entertainment releases).
Angelina Jolie is quite magnificent in the role of Maleficent and, as if her cheekbones weren’t spectacular enough to begin with, the computer boffs have exaggerated them with the technical wizardry at their command.
This film (which isn’t really appropriate for children under the age of six) is more than simply a prequel though.
It’s an entire reimagining and fleshing out of a character who, it could be argued, didn’t get quite the attention she deserved the first time around.
Tat Wolfen