Monday, June 9, 2014

Maleficent Review

 


I took my kids to the Drive-In this weekend (along with just about every other family in Niagara County, it appeared) to see Maleficent. I’ve got mixed feelings on this one. I liked that it took the familiar story and showed it from another character’s perspective, and while that’s what I liked about it, it’s also what I didn’t. After the third or fourth instance the initial aah was lost and it started to feel stale. At first I thought it was the acting, or maybe the script itself, but after much thought I think I’ve figured out the problem, and that’s only because I’ve just dealt with a similar problem myself with Blackbird. For those of you who don’t know, Blackbird is Newstead from another character’s perspective. My first plan was to follow Newstead exactly, but that was extremely limiting. So I didn’t. Instead, I had the stories intersect only on a few points, a very few. That’s what saved it. The opposite was true of Maleficent. The stories intersected too often. It felt forced. In their case I don’t know if they had a choice. The story of Sleeping Beauty is too well known, too dear to too many people. If they had strayed too far that might have been even worse. I guess that’s one of the benefits of doing a companion novel with a lesser known work: the freedom to make it what it will be.  

 

9 comments:

  1. Hi, Melanie.

    Interesting viewpoint. I saw it last week and LOVED it. I guess for me the acting, costumes, and sets really helped create such an amazing vision. We all know the story, but for me I thought learning more about Maleficent took the fairy tale out of itself and added an interesting twist.

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  2. This one just didn't catch my interest. I'll watch it on NetFlix with low expectations.

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  3. Hi Melanie! Chrys Fey nominated both of our blogs for the Liebster Award so I wanted to check yours out, of course=)
    I have been hesitant on seeing Malificent and after reading your review, I might wait until Netflex to watch it. Especially since the average movie-going night is about 30 bucks per couple so we'd rather wait the few extra months to see it.

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  4. I truly enjoyed this movie. As gr-parents, we often take our gr-kids to movies. First we preview them, with the child's view. To us, the central message is change and love. Even tho Maleficent was a frightening scary character, her transformation was obvious. She learned about love.

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  5. Since it's such a well-known story, they probably had no choice.

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  6. I saw Maleficent too; I thought it was pretty good, though I wished they had shown more of a development for the Sleeping Beauty character. But I guess the movie was more about Maleficent than anyone else. I thought that thing they did to make her cheekbones look really pointy was weird; it was kind of distracting for me because they freaked me out.

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  7. Haven't seen it. Wanted to take some kids with me to get their take. I've read mixed reviews, so something's happening with this movie. Guess I'll have to find to find out.

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  8. I'm not a big movie person, but this one didn't hold any allure for me. I probably wouldn't even chose this one at home. But I enjoyed your review!

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  9. I'm sure I will enjoy Maleficent for the special effects and for Angelina Jolie's portrayal of the character. I'm already irritated by the fact that they youthified and slenderized the three fairies from plump, genial crones to sweet little CGI maidens.
    I wanted to thank you for your visit to The Cheese Whines and for your kind comment on my Insecure Writer's Group post. I still feel kind of like I'm crashing the party, but it's nice to know that some people are okay with that.
    http://thecheesewhines.wordpress.com/2014/06/04/insecure-writers-support-group-the-wrong-kind-of-insecure

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