MALEFICENT
Release Date: 28 May 2014 (UK)
Director: Robert Stromberg
Running Time: 97 Minutes
Starring: Angelina Jolie, Sharlto Copley, Elle Fanning, Imelda Staunton, Lesley Manville, Juno Temple
Screening Reviewed: London Press Screening
Reviewed by Kyle Pedley
The biggest fallacy that must be quashed immediately when addressing Disney’s live action Maleficent is that it is somehow an alternative take upon the events of their 1959 animated classic Sleeping Beauty. This is not, as the studio has gone to pains in an attempt to paint out via it’s marketing and pre-release hype, a film which seeks to flesh out it’s characters and shift perspective on how and why the titular character fell to villainy, but rather an entirely different story made piecemeal by dint of a few familiar scenes, a handful of shared characters and the deliberately vague narration that attempts to dismiss the original film as a distorted version of the actuality it goes on to supposedly portray. The problem is, Maleficent doesn’t so much fill in the gaps and paper over the cracks of Sleeping Beauty as much as it wallpapers over the whole thing with an altogether different and at times completely juxtaposing series of events and characters.
