CAPSULE: Maleficent (2014, Dir. Robert Stromberg)

When Sleeping Beauty came out in 1959 it didn't fare so well. Disney's most expensive animated feature to date met with lukewarm reviews and was left foundering at the box office. The critical dunking and the failure of Disney's other films that year led to massive layoffs at the animation studio, which basically meant we were served up scratchy Xeroxed artwork for the next twenty years. Sleeping Beauty and its gorgeously designed, 70mm, hand painted artistry eventually went on to be recognised as a milestone of the art form.

Nobody is going to make the same argument for Robert Stromberg's "live action" rehash, Maleficent. Not now. Not in three decades time. And unfortunately, nobody at Disney is going to be going back to the drawing board on the predominant animation style.

You've probably already figured that Maleficent is not much more than a perfunctory attempt to "Wicked-ise" the company's own beloved property. They don't put much effort in. They don't really need to, they've got Angelina Jolie, enough computers to render a small army (another lot of walking trees, FYI) and one of Hollywood's most over-worked visual effects artists at the helm.

Let's just say for a first time director, Stromberg makes a good visual effects artist.

The fun of watching Jolie vamp her way through Maleficent isn't enough to keep interest, especially when you're repeatedly faced with blatant narrative thumb twiddling (meaningless takes of girl wandering though computer generated fantasy land looking happy while Jolie campily stalks her from afar) or unmotivated narrative chest thumping (Jolie half-heartedly over-pronouncing her power, usually to woeful Sharlto Copley's woeful King Stefan). Moments that threaten to hold emotional weight are unceremoniously truncated in favour of another few minutes of kid walking through computer generated fantasy land. Then, there is a dragon. That's not too bad.

In our topsy-turvy modern world, Maleficent is going to make a lot of money. The critics will pan it, audiences will go because they want to see horny Angelina Jolie and CGI spectacle. That's why I got dragged there. My husband was the dragger (he wanted a mention). I don't blame him. I would have gone anyway. It's Jolie, you know.

Go. Regret. Repeat.

★★

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