Maleficent: Mistress of Evil Review

October 18, 2019 at 2:24pm
By Jason Stettner

This is a sequel to Maleficent, that continues the story with more of a focus on her goddaughter Aurora (Elle Fanning). It’s a film that revolves around a royal wedding as two kingdoms want to have peace, with some shadowy background characters aiming to disrupt this process. Maleficent (Angelina Jolie) isn’t too present in this entry, with her going on more of an adventure through where she comes from and some of her origins.

Queen Ingrith (Michelle Pfeiffer) is also a big part of this fantasy journey, and acts as a chilling ruler being the mother of the prince that Aurora is out to marry. This basically sets the stage for what’s going on, as it’s rather dense in terms of story lines. There’s a lot going on, and it doesn’t necessarily mesh in the best of ways.

It’s a fine viewing that aims to cover some themes of intolerance towards others and attempting to provide some context as to why this happens. There’s lot of filling in the blanks for characters, and such a bizarre series of hearts changing along the way. It felt a bit silly to some degree when it comes to how things became sorted out.

This is a very younger audience focused adventure. It has some darker touches, but is generally an enchanting sort of presentation. There are lots of CGI elements to this, but for the most part they’re somewhat charming.

I felt the fairies with human heads were a bit unsettling and glaring, but it does feel magical for the most part. They did a good job on the large scale battles, but convenient how the castle area was setup for battle considering their original set plans. Again, some of this really didn’t make sense and it sort of just went along. It had a really strong start to it in terms of catching you up, and preparing you for what was going to happen.

It wasn’t bad by any means, just sort of fell apart towards the latter element of the movie. The acting was generally fine, Jolie was creepy as her lead character. I also found Fanning to be rather perfect for what she took part in. Being the princess of a strange land, while also having the attitude to go out and battle for what she believed in. Most of the characters had a lot to do actually, everyone had something going on throughout the run time.

The Conclusion

Maleficent: Mistress of Evil is generally alright, it’s a fine film for the younger audience target and presents a sequel that fills in a number of gaps. There’s a lot going on in this one, perhaps too much at times. Some of the later changes for characters were a tad silly, and there wasn’t enough of a mark left at the end considering the entire large scale battle that took place. There were losses, and things were way too friendly.

Anyways, that leads into the themes of battling some levels of intolerance between the factions of humanity and magic. It’s a fine Disney story, about what you’d expect looking at this one. It leans a little into the chilling dark elements, but is quite light hearted the entire way through. Great start, and more of a taper off effect as it progressed.

Maleficent: Mistress of Evil Review at Theater with Standard Viewing
Screening Provided by Disney

Rating Overall: 6.2