Which movie am I gonna watch tonight?
Maleficent
2014
Directed by Robert Stromberg
Staring: Angelina Jolie, Sharlto Copley, Elle Fanning, Sam Riley Imelda Staunton, Juno Temple, Lesley Manville
I really wanted to like this film. I really did.
Sleeping Beauty is my favorite Disney film and Maleficent is my favorite villain.
I like Angeline Jolie and Ellen Fanning as actresses and thought the casting choices were spot on, but in the end I thought this film was no good at all.
It could have been good, it could have been really good!
It was lacking so much though, floating somewhere just below average.
I blame the character development.
The film is nice to look at, no surprise considering that the director is also a production designer.
I was afraid that with all the CGI it was going to look like Alice in Wonderland or OZ, but it looked much better than that.
The costumes were great and the story wasn't completely bad either, but the character development is practically non existent.
It feels like someone is rehashing the most important points in a story without interest or feeling, rattling it down as fast as possible.
When something happens to the characters I feel nothing, since the non existent character development makes me feel nothing for them.
Just because someone sits in a room yelling, huffing around and people say "oh no he has gone mad" doesn’t mean I feel that he has indeed gone mad.
I don’t even blame the performances.
I am not sure if it is the writing or the editing.
I also read that they cut around 15 minutes of the beginning which might account for that issue of missing background story.
The film has no heart and that is exactly what I expect from a Disney film.
I think Disney needs to step it up, because it has been a long time since they created a movie that actually made me fell anything.
