Maleficent: A Movie Review

Happy Saturday! I hope everyone has something utterly fabulous planned for the long weekend. I am writing to you from sunny Lowestoft where I am helping out in my Aunty's coffee shop for the day. I say helping, my mum's helping I'm eating cake and blogging. 

In place of last night's Friday I'm in Love, it being a little ridiculous to post something about Friday on a Saturday (not that that's ever stopped me before!), I thought I would review Maleficent for you lovely lot. Yes I finally saw it.  Warning this post definitely contains spoilers. 

(Picture via www.disneypictures.net)

I have been dying to see Maleficent for quite some time, a year at least. When I was little Sleeping Beauty was my absolute favourite disney film and Maleficent was the reason why. I both love and fear Maleficent, she's my favourite Disney villain ever. She's kind of a bad ass, she's also a psycho but Disney traditionally portrays strong women as such and there is no denying that Maleficent is definitely a strong woman (with some mad eyeliner skills... just saying!) She was absolutely terrifying! To this day I maintain that she is the scariest Disney villain of all time. I think it's because she doesn't sing.  Just a theory. Anyway...

(Sorry for the terrible quality, I screenshot this from my dvd! This part used to terrify me when I was little. Even now I get a prickle of fear and I am too old to find this scary!) 

Because of this I had really high expectations of Maleficent and honestly I wasn't sure what to make of it, I am so conflicted! Feelings are mixed it's all very confusing. As a prequel it falls short and doesn't do justice to the original story. As a standalone film, however, I loved it. See I told you, I'm conflicted. 

I love re-imaginings of classic stories where you get to see things from a different perspective. It's part of the reason why I love Wicked so much (that and it's incredible). However I really don't like it when the new story seems to deliberately contradict the original. That really winds me up. And Maleficent, I'm afraid, is definitely guilty of this crime. I'll give you an example, the name Maleficent literally means the doing of evil. So the fact that she is a nice character, at the beginning of the film at least, actually annoys me. But I'm pretty sure that would only bother former nerdy English Students like myself. I haven't found anyone else who is bothered by that, so it must be just me. There were other things too but I won't spoil it. 

Maleficent tells the story of Sleeping Beauty from the point of view of Maleficent and how and why she came to be evil and all that jazz. I do love a good origin story. We first meet Maleficent as the child Fairy Queen of the Moors (which is one hell of a title). She is happy and kind and has wings. BUT then she meets the boy who will grow up to be King Stefan and they become childhood sweethearts. However Stefan is an orphan who dreams of becoming King and living in the Castle and it is this ambition that poisons their relationship. I won't go into too much detail because I think people should see it for themselves and form their own opinions. 

I must say that the casting of Angelina Jolie was genius. And as someone who has and always will be Team Aniston you can imagine what a bitter pill that is to swallow. Whilst I don't think I will ever love and appreciate Angelina Jolie in quite the same way as Jennifer Aniston her performance in this film has gone a long way to build bridges. Angelina, I forgive you... All Ancient Brad Pitt drama aside I think she absolutely embodied the role of Maleficent. She was terrifying but also vulnerable and was actually quite funny in places. 

The resemblance is quite amazing considering one is a cartoon! Look at that crazy good eyeliner! Picture via www.kdramastars.com

Overall I did like it, not as much as I was expecting but like I said I have very mixed feelings, I think to truly enjoy it I would need to treat Sleeping Beauty and Maleficent as separate entities.  Having said that it is definitely worth a watch, especially to all you Disney fans out there. 

Have you seen Maleficent? What did you think? Did you love it? Hate it? Or are you as conflicted as I am? Let me know either by twitter or commenting below. If you do comment I do always reply so check back. For those of you who haven't seen it check out the trailer below. 

So that is it for today but I do have some posts planned over the next couple of days so keep your eye out. Until then please check me out on facebook, BlogLovin, instagram & pinterest. Hope everyone has an amazing bank holiday weekend.

Love love love xxx