But lately, Disney have transformed a few of their old tales, turned them into live action and given them a bit of a Gothic twist to them.
We had Alice In Wonderland in 2010, Snow White And The Huntsman in 2012 and now Maleficent.
When I first heard the announcement of this, I was quite intrigued by the idea and the casting choices. But as we got nearer to the release date, I was thinking this could be another Alice In Wonderland. I started seeing CGI battles just to please modern audiences in the trailer, but I was still hopeful of an interesting take on the Sleeping Beauty tale.
The only performance that you really need to mention is Angelina Jolie. She did a pretty good job with the main character. There is good development to Maleficent and you do feel for her throughout. The only other performance that was worth mentioning was Imelda Staunton's, who reminds us how good she was in the Harry Potter franchise as Umbridge.
Other good positives were the visual effects. It is what you expect from summer blockbusters these days.
For the negatives, there is nothing massively bad, just a few frustrating moments. The pace of the movie is pretty solid and perfectly fine throughout. But the second half of the film starts to let itself down. It contained some odd scenes which seemed to jump away from the overall tone of the movie. Also, I felt the ending to be rushed.
There were a lot of important characters heavily under-used. It was a shame to see that as we could have seen more interesting character development. One that was not under-used but I felt to be badly done was Aurora's character. The performance by Elle Fanning was fine, but I felt her character was shown in the wrong way.
Despite the obvious multiple flaws, I felt it be not that bad and quite pleasant viewing. I admired its attempt to modernise the tale, but I was hoping for the tone to be scarier and darker. But with it being a PG certificate it felt too kid friendly for me.
Jolie is definitely the star attraction. She does give us an in-depth view on Maleficent and played the role quite well. Angelina definitely made this movie.
All of the other performances were o.k but were never scene-stealers apart from maybe Imelda Staunton. A few important characters were definitely under-used which was very disappointing.
You could easily make a trilogy with Alice In Wonderland and Snow White And The Hunstman in terms of modern re-makes of the classic tales that are o.k and generally disappointing.
But I would stick to the originals as they still do the trick after many decades from its original release.
Rating: 7/10
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