Well, there’s still no female superhero movie, but at least we have Angelina Jolie as a pissed-off fairy-tale avenging angel. It’s the role she was born to play! If only there was a decent movie for her to play it in.
This muddled reboot of “Sleeping Beauty,” despite a bit of sisterhood-is-powerful lip service, falls down on the job, joining the ranks of those two “Snow White” updates in the “Really? This is the best you could do with all that money and a timeless children’s story?” genre. Directed, in a feature debut, by visual effects artist Robert Stromberg, it’s often arresting to look at, but never has a strong sense of where it wants to go.
Jolie’s horned Maleficent, born a fairy in a magical glowy swamp kingdom at odds with its “Game of Thrones”-esque neighbors, is no villain. Her character only takes on her scowl (and cowl) after being repeatedly assaulted by humans, particularly one (Sharlto Copley) whom she thinks she’s in love with. After drugging and mutilating her (so disturbingly, I might add, that I’d hesitate to bring any non-grown-up to this movie), he goes on to become king of the other kingdom, and thus her vengeful wicked queen is born. It all feels more “I Spit on Your Grave” than Brothers Grimm.
Watching Jolie attain full malevolence is delicious. When she storms into the castle with magical fingertips blazing, she’s as formidable as the best screen villains; when she gets quietly angry, it’s even better. Other characters seem to crumble around her like so much CGI dust. Wait . . . maybe that was CGI dust. It’s hard to tell, because so little of the movie outside of Jolie feels non-computer-generated.
As per the original, she lays a curse on the king’s baby daughter. Aurora will grow up pretty — still non-negotiable, even in 2014 — and prick her finger on a spinning wheel at 16, falling into a deep sleep forever (otherwise known as a coma?). Unless, that is, she is redeemed by true love’s kiss, a caveat Maleficent only tacks on out of sheer cynicism.
But then, as if taken hostage by her own fairy biological clock, Maleficent becomes obsessed with stalking and eventually befriending the youth she’s cursed. Jolie’s least believable line — to her own daughter, Vivienne, playing the toddler Aurora — is, “Go away. I don’t like children.”
As for Jolie’s other company on-screen, Sam Riley (“On the Road”) fares best as Maleficent’s shape-shifting familiar, putting an appealingly Goth spin on the business of being half-crow.
Imelda Staunton, Juno Temple and Lesley Manville are mired in bad, giggly slapstick as a trio of good fairies, and Elle Fanning, as the grown princess, isn’t asked to do anything but appear beatific and befriend various CGI swamp creatures, many of which seem like they drifted over from the “Avatar” cutting room floor (and might have, as Stromberg was the production designer on that film). And, as the handsome prince, Brenton Thwaites looks like a lost member of One Direction.
No, this is not the movie Jolie’s character deserves. And yet, I’ll admit, it made me a little teary to see the actress winged and soaring, like some Greek god, one year after that very public disclosure of her cancer surgeries. For all the CGI noise around Jolie, her central performance here is still a gloriously cinematic happily-ever-after.