'Maleficent': Not fairy good
Angelina Jolie plays a wicked fairy who learns to be less wicked in "Maleficent," a convoluted and creepy version of "Sleeping Beauty."
AS THE title character in "Maleficent," Angelina Jolie places a curse on a baby to avenge the ex-boyfriend who cut off her wings.
Well, you know what they say. Hell hath no fury like a woman shorn.
Especially when that woman is Jolie with a digitally disfigured face, amber snake eyes, black horns that make her look like the hood ornament on Morticia Addams' town car, and green smoke coming out of her bony fingers.
The problem in "Maleficent" is how to take this baby-cursing freak and make her palatable to a post-"Frozen" sisterhood of empowered girls.
She's meant to be a rehabilitated version of the wicked fairy in the story of "Sleeping Beauty" - more specifically, the character we know from the 1959 Disney version of the much more elaborate story from the Brothers Grimm.
The updated fairy tale recasts Maleficent as a caretaker and defender of the wild and enchanted moors, whose wings are an expression of her links to nature and her soaring freedom.
The nearby patriarchal monarchy (just because they're dudes, I guess) wants to destroy Maleficent's realm, so an ambitious prince (Sharlto Copley) seduces her and clips her wings to ascend to the throne. Pissed off Maleficent, in turn, curses his firstborn to be comatose on her 16th birthday.
Does any of this sound like a fun Saturday at the movies?
The movie makes halfhearted attempts to lighten things up. Maleficent orders around a sidekick she can turn into any animal she pleases - crow, dragon, horse, man, they're interchangeable. Imelda Staunton plays one of three buzzing pixies who raise the infant in a woodland hideout (which Maleficent knows all about. The rejiggered story doesn't make much sense).
The baby grows up to be princess Aurora (Elle Fanning). Maleficent monitors every minute of her childhood, which is a bit stalker-ish, but over time the relationship evolves into something more tender.
This leaves little doubt as to where "Maleficent" is headed, story-wise, since the curse on Aurora can only be lifted by "the kiss of true love."
It's the "Frozen" playbook. Made needlessly complex by 10 layers of writers, who make the movie a botch job of murky motivation and arbitrary plotting. Actors are given a single note to play, save for Jolie, who is lost under all the digital and manual makeup.
And how progressive are these newfangled fairy tales anyway?
They dispense with the cliche of male rescue, but retain the beautiful-princess template, still the real profit center.
Thus, parents all over America are on eBay, bidding up prices for "Frozen" princess dresses north of $1,000.
You can acquire the accessories of the new empowerment, but sister, it's going to cost you.