Maleficent: Mistress of Evil
Please excuse our lateness of this review! We are covering every Academy Award nominee of 2020, so we’re cleaning up the films we forgot to critique earlier.
Maleficent: Mistress of Evil is not as bad as I was expecting, oddly enough. It was hard to realize that underneath a lot of the flittering annoyance of the ten thousand creatures and elements going on at once (I get that a fantasy world has to be built, but control is needed). There’s also the first act feeling like every scene is the ending of another film; it’s all too overwhelming and poorly paced. What kept me going? Well, I saw deep down that there was an interesting story behind this sequel (which seemed completely pointless on paper). Aurora is asked for her hand in marriage by Prince Phillip. Maleficent is still seen as an evil, hateful “witch” by the kingdoms featured (outside of her own colony, which accepts her as she has been ostracized at Queen Ingrith of Ulstead’s insistance). Queen Ingrith actually has nefarious plans of her own (so Maleficent wasn’t the mistress of evil? Dun-dun-duuuuuun!"). What will the lead characters do?
Even though the plot is a little screwy, I can appreciate an honest attempt. Most of the film screams “cash grab”, especially with the visual effects (one out of twenty five creations feels authentic, and the rest are an absolute CGI nightmare). I have no idea how a sequel to Maleficent (which was a bore but competently made) made by Disney could look this subpar on the effects front; there was even so much time to make this sequel! Ignore that, and forgive some plot hiccups, and Maleficent: Mistress of Evil is kind of okay. Once you survive the first act, you have Maleficent’s union with similar fairies, and things suddenly get a whole lot more interesting. Aurora’s plot line is quite obvious, but well handled by an always-reliable Elle Fanning, and a standout performance by Michelle Pfeiffer. On the Maleficent front, come on. It’s the return of Angelina Jolie as Maleficent. I don’t need to say more.
Guess who’s back? Back again? The character in the title, of course.
Act three is some more visual nausea, but at least the melodrama is justified (it actually is the ending of the film now). At the heart of the film, it’s just fairly standard fantasy war stuff. I wouldn’t say Mistress of Evil is particularly worse than Maleficent outside of the shoddy CGi. It’s about the same otherwise. If you find the first film boring, then this will bore you (like it did me to an extent). If you love Maleficent, then Mistress of Evil is guaranteed same-stuff goodness. At the end of the day, parts of the film hurt my head, and I was surprisingly engaged to other aspects. It’s a much more honest attempt at a financially viable sequel by a super power conglomerate than I gave the film credit for. Mistress of Evil is far from great, but it’s not bad overall, save for some truly awful moments.
Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Ryerson University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.