Maleficent (Robert Stromberg)

[TGM]

MALEFICENT

Director: Robert Stromberg

imdb

[TGM]

So this is essentially a gritty, live action version of Frozen. Well okay then. Aside from some over-familiarity in that regard, this wasn't bad. Certainly got better as it went along, in any event.

[Henry Gale]

The way a lot of reviews have dissected this make it out to be a much stranger beast than I would've ever imagined. And this is after all those reshoots ostensibly tried to fix it up.

I think between this and A Million Ways (which I have a strange feeling I'll like tons more than Ted but spend way more time trying to justify that in the future), I'll just save my time/money for 22 Jump Street, How To Train Your Dragon 2, and Edge of Tomorrow.

[Rowland]

The appearance of a certain deliberately marginalized character during the epilogue plays like the most hilariously transparent test-screening-mandated reshoot of all-time.

The battle sequence in the opening half-hour features a distracting number of artless snap zooms, more than the rest of the film combined by my count.

Fuck the fairy godmothers IMO. And what is Sharlito Copley's accent doing in this movie? The kid who plays Prince Phillip is a dweeb as well, but at least that suits the character.

[eternity]

Juno Temple plays Elle Fanning's aunt. Five stars.

[Bosco B Thug]

This was the biggest load of balhooey.

[Mal]

I really wanted to like this movie but the script blowwwwsss.

[Dukefrukem]

Wooooow. Live action Frozen only in the Summer.

[Dukefrukem]

So this is essentially a gritty, live action version of Frozen. Well okay then. Aside from some over-familiarity in that regard, this wasn't bad. Certainly got better as it went along, in any event.

Yup. Finale was the best part of the movie, but the rest is crap.

[Henry Gale]

Whoooa is this ever some clunky shit.

I thought I had appreciated Branagh's Cinderella as much as I reasonably could, but right now it's getting needlessly bumped up significant notches in my mind for simply for being so seemingly effortless in its general filmmaking and storytelling after seeing this stupendously falter in those and seemingly endless other ways.

This is a movie where you can almost hear executives and its (eventually multiple) director(s) squirming and arguing about it not working and how it needed to be fixed, with the biggest issue of all being no meat on its bones to nourish in the first place. (And maybe even its bones are shitty!)

It makes completely sense to me that despite all the money and reshoots thrown at it, it runs 88 minutes without credits.

This is basically a textbook example of by-committee not working whatsoever. So at least it can exist as a demonstrative pariah in that sense. (I say all of this trying to ignore that it made $758.4 million at the box office and no one important high up will likely learn anything from its creative process or its final product.)

The battle sequence in the opening half-hour features a distracting number of artless snap zooms, more than the rest of the film combined by my count.

Fuck the fairy godmothers IMO.

THESE. WHAT WERE THESE ABOUT. [post-production snap zoom towards my face in anguish]

[TGM]