Last Night I Watched: ‘Maleficent: Mistress of Evil’

I try not to be too judgemental about a film after only watching five minutes of it, but I must admit I did start to think Maleficent: Mistress of Evil was going to be a let down as soon as I noticed Prince Philip’s character had been recast. Harrison Dickinson took on Brenton Thwaites’ role because of difficulties with his filming schedule. In my opinion, Thwaites had a lucky escape, the film was not even worth interrupting my essay writing schedule to watch, and it was just under two hours long.

What baffles me the most is how the producers even managed to fill two hours with this drab plot line, which, not to brag or spoil, I did guess ridiculously early on.

What baffles me the most is how the producers even managed to fill two hours with this drab plot line, which, not to brag or spoil, I did guess ridiculously early on. The only mildly interesting scene in the film was the dinner party. The tension between all the characters somehow had me on edge more than during the final battle scene. It did however remind me of the scene in Shrek 2 when Fiona is introducing Shrek to her parents – another dinner party from Hell.

Now, Shrek as Maleficent may seem like a wild comparison, but even when you look further into the plot the parallels are just too uncanny. Maleficent finds hundreds of others like her living underground and they join together to fight against humans… sounding familiar? Well, if you remove Rumpelstiltskin from the plot, then this is undoubtedly what happens in Shrek 4. I promise this is a legitimate comparison and the fact that Netflix is removing Shrek isn’t making me see it in everything.

The plot isn’t the only thing that seems recycled to me, the second villain was pretty much a carbon-copy of Snow White and the Huntsman’s Queen, but only in motivation and appearance wise. Their outfits at times seemed almost identical. Unfortunately for Michelle Pfeiffer, she did not come close to Charlize Theron’s seductive and threatening demeanour. I can’t quite pinpoint what Pfeiffer’s Queen was lacking, but she certainly wasn’t someone I was afraid of.

Any dialogue she spoke seemed to be an attempt from the writers to slide a dramatic one-liner into the film. Pfeiffer couldn’t even finish a sentence of more than five words without taking a long pause and the jarring music in between started to seem ridiculous after a while. It seems the run-time is starting to make a bit more sense now.

But it wasn’t just the Queen – the other characters seemed to have just the same difficulty speaking properly. Not to mention the lack of emotion in any of their voices. Aurora, played by Elle Fanning, was particularly dull and unconvincing. It seemed as though a robot was acting during the opening scene, which was meant to be light-hearted and funny, but in reality it made me cringe . Maybe I am forgetting that this is meant to be a kids movie, but even in emotional scenes I think I am right to expect some level of acting. Even when Fanning was crying on the ground, I still wasn’t drawn in by her character.

The only good acting in the movie, and perhaps its only saving grace, was from the little fairy creatures. But that’s only because they were made by CGI. The side love story of the hedgehog fairy and the mushroom fairy had me gushing much more than whenever the Prince or Princess were on the screen. But then again, perhaps this creation is just another baby Yoda attempt from Disney.

If I’m honest, apart from the fairies and the occasional aesthetics of the film, the only thing that got me through was my friend’s frequent comments about whether he would date Maleficent.

If I’m honest, apart from the fairies and the occasional aesthetics of the film, the only thing that got me through was my friend’s frequent comments about whether he would date Maleficent. In the end he concluded she probably wouldn’t be too bad of a girlfriend as long as she got rid of the horns. I guess self-isolation is already proving too much for some already, but even so, I still wouldn’t recommend this film to anyone wanting to pass their time in quarantine.