![\"\"](\"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/image-17.png\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nAlso Angelina Jolie is\nback as Maleficent, the imposing fairy who served as the villain for the 1959\nanimated film \u201cSleeping Beauty.\u201d Maleficent got an origin movie back in 2014\nthat didn\u2019t so much recontextualize the animated film as it did completely\nchange the narrative so that Maleficent was the protagonist who saved Princess\nAurora from her evil father and the incompetent fairies. Reviews for the film\nwere lukewarm at best, with the only compliments being directed at Jolie\u2019s\nglowering performance. Still, the movie did enough business to warrant a\nsequel, but since the familiar \u201cSleeping Beauty\u201d material is all used up,\nMaleficent is going to have to have an original adventure this time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The film opens with\nAurora agreeing to marry her beloved Prince Phillip (Harris Dickinson). The\nkids are happy, Maleficent isn\u2019t. Phillip is from a notoriously fairy-hating\nkingdom led officially by the tolerant King John (Robert Lindsay), but really\nby the evil Queen Ingrith (Michelle Pfeiffer). Ingrith is so drawling and\nsuspicious in her cadences that quite frankly the other characters look stupid\nfor not picking up on her wickedness immediately. She wants to wipe out the\nfairy kingdom because\u2026 the given reason is something tacked-on about a son who\nwent missing in the fairies\u2019 forest, but really I think she just saw those\nfairy godmothers and wants to scrub them from the earth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
During a not-so-passive\naggressive dinner argument, Maleficent is framed for an attack on the king. While\nfleeing, she discovers more fairies of her own race, known as Dark Feys. The\nleader Conall (Chiwetel Ejiofor, here used well in a small role, as opposed to\n\u201cThe Lion King,\u201d where he was used poorly in a major role) wants to make peace\nwith the humans, but the uppity Borra (Ed Skrein) wants to go to war before the\nhumans can attack first. Maleficent is conflicted, since she knows the human\nrace contains both Aurora and Ingrith. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The climactic action\nsequence is more \u201cGame of Thrones\u201d than Disney. There is a body count in these\nscenes, especially a segment where Ingrith\u2019s servant Gerda (Jenn Murray, the film\u2019s\nbiggest scene-stealer) passionately attacks fairies with a poisoned organ,\ngiving the scene a haunting soundtrack reminiscent of the climactic massacre in\n\u201cThe Godfather.\u201d She even gets some uncharacteristically bold action out of the\nfairy godmothers in this scene, making them tolerable for the first time in\nthis franchise. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The film tries to give\nsome development to Aurora and Phillip in an attempt to compensate for the\ncharacters\u2019 staggering blandness in the 1959 film. The problem is that it overcompensates\nand Aurora and Phillip are pretty much the leads in the second half of the\nfilm, with Maleficent hardly appearing at all. Fanning and Dickinson do an\nadmirable job, but there\u2019s got to be a healthy middle ground between\n\u201cuninspired\u201d and \u201cforgetting which character is selling the tickets.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
As a whole,\n\u201cMaleficent: Mistress of Evil\u201d doesn\u2019t work. The CGI effects aren\u2019t as\nimpressive as the film thinks they are, decisions and motivations exist simply\nto move the plot along, quick cuts and pacing mean that nothing really gets the\nchance to sink in, and the ending is laughably rushed and forced. But honestly,\nI halfway want to recommend the movie based on the over-the-top dinner and\norgan scenes alone. Sorry, the answer is no. It comes close, but too much of\nthis movie is the wrong kind of silly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Grade: C<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMaleficent: Mistress of Evil\u201d is\nrated PG for intense sequences of fantasy\/action violence and brief scary\nimages. Its running time is 118 minutes. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Bob Garver As promised, \u201cMaleficent: Mistress of Evil\u201d delivers the most vile, repugnant, terrifying creatures known to man. I\u2019m speaking of course, about the three fairy godmothers (Imelda… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":45110,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45109"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45109\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}