Maleficent: Mistress of Evil

Except, not really...Evil, that is. Or so this movie would have you believe. In a way that makes some story sense; in the original Disney Sleeping Beauty, Ms. Horns causes all the trouble because she feels slighted. Perhaps she’s more “mistress of peevishness” than anything else. Anyway, the producer folks at the studio try to make her the hero here, or at least not the biggest problem in this outing. They had enough sense not to go overboard with it; as Old Mal, Angelina Jolie does not exactly gush or strike heroic poses—she just avoids being homicidal and sort of saves the day at the end, though not without a certain amount of destruction. The other characters—including Elle Fanning's Aurora, who is the only particular standout—do their things through various degrees of forgettable-ness, while the bulk of the story lives awash in computer generated visuals, up to and including the now typical of every fantasy movie climactic battle chaos. Really, story-wise it’s something of a muddle; perhaps that’s because I watched the sequel before ever seeing the original. (I blame the current chaotic streaming landscape.) Try this trick and you’re left wondering about the relationships between all these particularly M being A’s godmother (really, more like adoptive mother, but godmother sounds more storybook, I guess). Anyway, there are some decent scenes here, mostly involving Jolie and her work in the title character, and a few instances where the vibe of a real fairy tale does come through. I wouldn’t say this one casts any real spells, but it doesn’t curse you or put you to sleep either.