Maleficent

I'm still not riding the new wave of fairy tales with new shifted meanings, but if some of the others are at least as polished as Maleficent, I see great promise. I still don't even watch the Once Upon a Time series, but holy cow, this was delicious! I'm also not a fan of Angelina or the original Disney film. In short, when things go well, they go well. Even Lana's title song is divine here, as well as all the subtle humor combined with the epic. (29/08/2014)

I’ve been looking forward to Maleficent for a long time. Even my girlfriend told me that she would love to see it at the cinema. That was a proof to me that we simply have to go see it and so we did. The result turned out very well. Although it is a digital parade, everything is so honest and beautiful that it can be easily forgiven. Angelina Jolie couldn’t be better. Her character has wonderful mood swings and I enjoyed her feelings like never before. But I also enjoyed the locations to which the Americans put great care. It is an absolutely amazing fantasy world, where it is immediately clear who belongs to whom and what the map of it would probably look like if you decided to draw it. This movie is just like that. It seeks strength in simplicity and I simply enjoyed it. I wouldn’t be angry at all if there were more such fairytales. (10/06/2014)

Maleficent is another in a series of new adaptations fairytale classics that haven't aged with time, and as a lover of Disney films, I couldn't pass up such a feat. And I have to say that this film is beautifully stylized, they really took care not only on the production design, but also on the look of the characters, both human and mythical. I’ve never been a fan of Angelina Jolie, I was quite put off by her Lara Croft, but this role really suited her perfectly and won my sympathy. As has been mentioned in other reviews here, I also liked the development of the relationship between Aurora and Maleficent, which for me was the centre of the whole story and was handled brilliantly. Who really is the villain in this story? Not everything is as it seems! Finally, I must not forget to mention the magical song "Once Upon a Dream" by Lana Del Rey. All in all, a very well made film which, like all fairy tales, offers a clash between good and evil, alongside a nice audio-visual experience and a likeable cast. (03/06/2014)

Maleficent gave me almost everything I once expected from Snow White with Julia Roberts as the evil queen. A notorious story imaginatively turned on its head, a magical world where the fairytale meets the darker fantasy stuff, as well as an amazing main character on whom everything is of course based. Angelina Jolie is great in the lead role. She is very pretty, she has no problem expressing any emotion, and every smile (there are not many, but they are there) is literally magical. Moreover, the film boasts a beautiful production design, as the rookie director obviously had a lot of visual ideas and James Newton Howard again pulled successful theme music out of his sleeve, the special effects are just right and the flashy digital ones are only occasionally there. The only thing that bothered me was probably the trio of fairy godmothers, especially since they stopped being digital, while the much talked about useless prince is a pretty good joke considering the original fairy tale (where he also does almost nothing because the fairies do most of the work for him). (25/10/2014)

Representatives of American studios will probably find my well-intentioned advice unconvincing, but just in case, here you go: When you next want to rehabilitate a fairy tale archvillain, don't skimp and hire a capable screenwriter alongside the cast and crew. I have nothing against alternative stories and different perspectives - I can even accept a gingerbread house being portrayed as a raid by ill-behaved imps destroying an old witch's dwelling, who in a sudden burst of emotion decides to deal with her lack of protein. Just write and film it in a way that makes sense within the context of the fairy tale world and its rules. Unfortunately, Maleficent fails in this aspect. The king, who faces a curse from his only daughter, the queen of the magical world, doesn't have her guarded like his most precious possession by an army of servants, but instead entrusts her upbringing to three clearly inept and quarrelsome fairies - representatives of the world with which he is at war. Nobody watches over the girl, and she regularly meets with the queen of the magical realm without any problems. Except for Maleficent, the other characters are underdeveloped, and in the end, the film relies on traditional Hollywood weapons - set design and special effects. Angelina handles her part with ease, while the other actors don't bring much to the table. I'm somewhat bothered by the visual style that caters to kids and the biggest kitsch enthusiasts. But then again, what can I expect from a family spectacle? Overall impression: 45%. (10/05/2017)