MALEFICENT: A POWERFUL FAIRY- movie review

One Sunday evening, my sister brought home a copy of a Walt Disney movie and while doing some of my work, I watch the movie that she said a modernized version of the fairy tale Sleeping Beauty.

Angelina Jolie stars as Maleficent, a fairy with super powers living in a magical forest called Moors. Nearby was a kingdom occupied by humans. As a young girl, she meets and falls head over heels in love with a peasant named Stefan. Stefan though was ambitious and his affection for Maleficent was overshadowed by a desire to free his poor status.

King Henry attempts to conquer the Moors but Maleficent repulses the attack, seriously wounding him in the process. In what lawyers call “dying declaration”, he edicts that whoever kills Maleficent will be his successor package-deal-marriage with his only daughter, Princes Leila. Stefan went to the Moors to carry out the task, but conscience-stricken, could not accomplish the evil deed. Instead, he cuts Maleficent’s wings and presents them to the king as an evidence of her death. The wings are deposited in the King’s chambers. Wingless and anguished by her love’s betrayal, Maleficent declares herself Queen of the Moors, forming a kingdom with a raven named Diaval who, in human form, became her wings, spy, and confidant.

During the Christening of now King Stefan’s daughter Aurora, Maleficent gatecrashes the event. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned and with vengeance puts a curse to the infant that on her 16^th birthday, she will prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel, put her into a deep sleep from which she will never be awaken no more. The king begs for mercy and Maleficent magnanimously says that the curse can only be broken by true love’s kiss.

To protect her princess, the King sends her to stay in the forest with three fairies. As a parallel move, he destroys or keeps in the dungeons all the spinning wheels and sends his armies to find and kill Maleficent.

As a kid while playing amidst the shrubs and trees in the fantasy forest, Aurora’s life was saved by Maleficent when she nearly fell off a cliff. From then on, Maleficent cared, became fond, and loved her like her own daughter. As she, the princess, called her as her fairy godmother. Maleficent wanted to revoke the curse but even she cannot do it. Along the way, Aurora met Prince Philip and they fall for each other. Diaval’s opinion that their love would solve the curse but Maleficent nods in the negative saying the reason that the antidote would never work was because true love does not exist.

The day before Auroras 16^th birthday, Maleficent invites Aurora to move to the Moors to live with her while assuming she would avoid the curse. She went home to tell about it to the three fairies whom she lived with who instead revealed who her real father is. She runs to the castle where her father lives and then she was kept in a room. Lost in the dungeon, she got herself pricked by the spindle and falls into a deep sleep. There goes sleeping beauty.

Maleficent kidnap Philip with Diaval and they go to the castle on a suicide mission to let Philip kiss Aurora and awake her from the curse. She, the princess, however, did not awaken. Maleficent, repentant, swore eternal love. She kisses her on her forehead and behold breaks the spell. Maleficent’s expression of motherly care was indeed what true love meant. Aurora and Maleficent are about to escape the castle but are attacked by Stefan and his guards. Maleficent was trapped in a net of steel, but Aurora frees her wings from the chamber and reattached it to Maleficent who overpowers Stefan. Maleficent could have killed him right there but she did not. He however plummets off the tower to his death.

Aurora then becomes Queen unifying the two kingdoms of Moors and the human territory with Philip. Maleficent continued to be protector of the kingdoms with Diaval of course on her side as they fly above the Moors into the sunset, and everybody lived happily ever after. Mushy. Sigh!