MALEFICENT!!!!

As per my previous post, I saw Maleficent this weekend (free GrandmaBee babysitting FTW). The film was augmented by an ice cream sundae and detracted from by a mid-film power outage.

First and foremost, this film was sweet, interesting, and pretty. It wasn't OMG oscar material (except maybe for the make-up/special effects, which were very, very cool) but it was good fun. It knocked the Bechdel Test out of the park and maybe (?) failed the opposite test (I can't remember if there are any conversations between named male characters (of which there are at least three) that are not about Maleficent).
My thoughts with minimal spoilers (but yeah, definitely some spoilers) after the jump.



Things I liked:

1. This was a story about a woman who does things, has feelings, and who grows as a person throughout the film. She happens to be wearing awesome fetish gear looking horns while doing all of this, which I take as a plus. 
2. This story provides a plausible Wicked-style alternate viewpoint of what happened in the original Disney film and why. I have loved this style of story telling since my childhood days of The True Story of the Three Little Pigs . Sure, it relies on the kind of tired woman-done-wrong narrative, but in a way that I found comfortable. For example, yes Maleficent is jealous and she was hurt by the King but she aims her jab at him (via his daughter) and not at his wife. She also does it all to jab at him that there is no such thing as true love - more on that in a moment. I like that his transformation is shown as being a slow descent as evidenced by his Tell Tale Heart remorse ("can't you see that we are having a conversation?!"). 
3. They went for the Frozen take on true love. Can I just say that I am digging on all of these Sisters Doing It For Themselves stories? I know that they're problematic. I am not heralding this as some Feminist victory (I do actually reserve that for Brave), but... women being friends, women valuing their mothers, women valuing their sisters, those are stories that I actually have not seen before in children's entertainment and I find it refreshing. Even the bumbling fairies are not total jokes (ala Hocus Pocus's witch sisters, who, full disclosure, I also love), I base this on the fact that they go out of their way to bless Aurora in order to make peace and that they then volunteer to raise her, even if they haven't a single maternal bone between the three of them. 
4. I love the Raven character, Diaval (Diablo in the original Disney cartoon). He is maternal and I dig his friendly love for Maleficent and his motherly love for Aurora. Plus, can we just talk about how cool the dog, horse, and dragon forms were? !!!!!!!! So cool. Visually, those were probably my favorite parts of the film. 

Things I didn't like:

1. They could have fleshed out why the human kingdom is so evil. The jealous thing could have had more of a political bite and still stayed a kids film. They sort of sweep it under the rug that socialism Fairy style is better than feudalism and just show everything being less colorful when Maleficent makes herself queen instead of just being ... wait, why was she so important as a little kid again? The political situation could have added something good to this film and instead they just glossed and hand waved past it. 
2. When Aurora runs away to the castle, I wished that there had been more there too to really show that she has made a mistake. They rush past that to her being cursed so quickly that there is not really any emotional pull. 
3. Why is Maleficent so dumb that she doesn't realize that the good parts of the Fairy "presents" would effect her too? Of course she loves a kid who is literally enchantingly perfect. Maybe showing a little more... evil at the beginning and more reluctance to look after her? I don't know, this is still a kids movie... I have to think about this one. 
4. The pacing in general was just a bit off. 

Thing I don't know how I feel about:

1. Aurora. She is preternaturally sweet and kind which is a duh because a bunch of fairies blessed/cursed her to be so at birth. But... it's weird. She is the human embodiment of love and kindness and not a person. I would have liked her to have been a little more interesting - I can't tell if this was an issue with the script, the direction, the actress or all three. It seemed like a deliberately made choice and... eh. I get why they made that choice (see fairy blessings/curses) but... I just wasn't so excited about how it was handled. 

Final Verdict: If you like kids' movies, you'll probably enjoy this one too. Angelina Jolie was made for this role (and her love for the film is evident throughout). It's fun. It's sweet. There is cool action and two epic battle scenes, one of which includes a sweet dragon. Definitely worth the ticket price to see it in the theaters (especially if you can have ice cream while watching), and definitely one that we'll be buying on bluray for our home collection.