Maleficent Review

Directed by: Robert Stromberg

Starring: Angelina Jolie, Elle Fanning, Sam Riley, Sharlto Copley, Imelda Staunton

Running Time: 1 h and 37 min

I think at first that I have come wrong - that film makers had launched "Tinker Bell" instead of Disney's latest big bet. Or is it a trailer for a new film in Peter Pan franchise?

Instead, it turns out that "Maleficent" begins much brighter and more childish than the advance publicity suggests. On the bus shelter posters piling a horn crowned Angelina Jolie up with icy gaze and razor-sharp cheekbones. The contrast with Jar Jar Binks-crazed units on the big screen is almost as big that you get the urge to dismiss the whole film. Small trunked frog figurines throwing mud at each other, some relatives of Harry Potter elf Dobby shedding past and in the water wading large "enter" around on their logs to the bone.

In this kingdom is the fairy Maleficent queen, and already her name - "evil, wicked" - suggests that luck is that we will quickly provide the receipted riga idyll.

This boy leaves her, however, in search of fame and fortune and slowly begins Maleficents metamorphosis from nature's friend until dictatorial princess. While the boy was subsequently crowned king in the kingdom of man creates himself Maleficent a throne of thorns, get a raven to companions and begin filing on the revenge that storybook feel that the evil curse of the fens in Sleeping Beauty. Here she takes additionally step further - the little princess Aurora's sleep will not last for a hundred years but forever.

Angelina Jolie is perfect for the role of arch-elf - it's basically impossible to see someone else take on the wide wing span and carry up the pointy buck horns. Elle Fanning is ethereal, yet uninteresting as that habit princess, she Maleficent against her will take a liking to.

One could wish that Robert Stromberg had dared to make the fairy tale "good" characters less stereotypical. Maybe it's meant for us to think that the three good fairies (played among others by Imelda Staunton) with the task to take care of the princess until she turns 16, is cute in his maddeningly. And if we are charmed by the Aurora, wherever she wakes up, do it with a soft smile. Jolie not benefit from being strengthened by sugar sweet opposites - her strength is that she herself may be both villain and heroine. Here, just like in Disney's "Frost" and for that matter also in Tinker Bell series, requires no princes come to the rescue - as in fairy-context feels very liberating. I have always been very hard for all these redemptive kisses, especially when one person is unconscious and has not asked to be necked with.

The princes and princesses squeezed where the toy shelves, but to be honest, it is almost always the side characters that are of interest in the stories. The grip to focus instead on the antagonist, which Par Lagerkvist did in "Barabbas," gives the tale an extra dimension. Maleficent would have preferred, like the Bible robbers got ponder more - that her darkness is based solely in the betrayal from her lover feels a bit too shallow.

But while you can not get away from that Disney on recent times has developed its storytelling and left it too nicely groomed behind.