Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
A beautiful, pure-hearted young woman, Maleficent has an idyllic life growing up in a peaceable forest kingdom, until one day when an invading army threatens the harmony of the land. She rises to be the land's fiercest protector, but she ultimately suffers a ruthless betrayal – an act that begins to turn her heart into stone. Bent on revenge, Maleficent faces an epic battle with the invading King's successor and, as a result, places a curse upon his newborn infant Aurora. As the child grows, Maleficent realizes that Aurora holds the key to peace in the kingdom – and to Maleficent's true happiness as well.
Maleficent reimagines the Sleeping Beauty villain as a sympathetic protagonist, which is a genuinely interesting angle, but the execution is uneven. The plot rushes key emotional beats and the third act collapses into formulaic action sequences that undercut the character work. Angelina Jolie commands the screen with genuine presence and elevates material that doesn't always deserve it, while the supporting cast is largely underdeveloped. Visually the film has some striking dark fantasy imagery though the CGI-heavy environments feel over-rendered and synthetic at times. The retelling angle gives it some novelty credit — subverting the Disney villain origin is a worthwhile creative concept — but it doesn't push the idea as far as it could. The ending resolves too neatly and the 'true love' twist, while conceptually clever, is telegraphed and lands without much emotional weight.