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  • Maleficent: Mistress Of Evil ⋆ ⋆

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Maleficent: Mistress Of Evil ⋆ ⋆

OUT NOW! A sequel was all but inevitable (if delayed) but the uninspired narrative results in a depressingly by-the-numbers effort.

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Photo courtesy of Disney. Catch Maleficent: Mistress Of Evil in Berlin cinemas now!

In 2010, Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland kickstarted quite the trend: its box office success incited the House of Mouse to churn out countless live-action adaptations of animated blockbuster classics. The results, from Burton’s Carroll butchering to this year’s The Lion King, have been mixed-to-pointless. However, what Disney did right with 2014’s Maleficent was put a unique spin on the familiar story of 1959’s Sleeping Beauty, as opposed to blandly recreating the existing classic beat by beat. The film shifted focus to the titular antiheroine and while it wasn’t a perfect reimagination, it was still a fun fairytale romp. 

A sequel was all but inevitable (if delayed) and the result is a depressingly by-the-numbers effort that apes Avatar more than it should, and seems to exist solely to further inspire more horned Halloween costumes. The uninspired narrative centres around nuptials that’ll unite the fairy and human realms, and a feud that pits Angelina Jolie’s Maleficent against Michelle Pfeiffer’s Queen Ingrith. That raucous A-list donnybrook alone should have justified the price of admission. Sadly, Maleficent: Mistress Of Evil botches the opportunity to see the two thesps properly face off. Both do their best with the characters and greatly elevate scenes which the listless Elle Fanning and the comically foppish Harris Dickinson sink with their noticeable lack of charisma. Sam Riley is great as always, and the criminally underused Chiwetel Ejiofor returns to Disney after lending his voice to the villainous Scar in The Lion King. He plays a side-lined horned fairy that deserved far more screen time but is mercifully saved from appearing in the eye-rollingly poor finale, which opts for hasty resolutions above any sort of storytelling ambition. 

Maleficent: Mistress Of Evil | Directed by Joachim Rønning (US, 2019), with Angelina Jolie, Michelle Pfeiffer, Elle Fanning. Starts Oct 17.

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