I
haven’t seen this movie in ages, not
since I was young enough to be freaked out by Maleficent and not entirely sure
of all that was going on. I’ve rewatched
some Disney classics as an adult, but not this one, so, it was high on the list
for my periodic tour of Disney’s past and present.
Not too much need for a synopsis,
right? At her birth, the blessings Princess
Aurora receives from three good fairies are overshadowed by the curse bestowed by
the wicked Maleficent (because…? The
only reason given is that she wasn’t invited to the new baby’s birthday bash,
but really, she just seems to get off on horrifying people.) She dooms the princess to death-by-poisoned-spindle
before her 16th birthday, and while the good fairies can’t undo it,
they can add a few caveats – they
amend it from death to a sleeping curse, and they allow for True Love’s Kiss to
break it. Still, the royal family doesn’t
intend to take any risks. Every spinning
wheel in the land is destroyed (I guess all their cloth is imported for 16
years? Hey, maybe Maleficent is just a
really dedicated Big Textile lobbyist from a foreign kingdom!), and the fairies
take the baby to be raised in hiding in a woodland cottage. Nothing can go wrong, right?
In
general, I’d say it’s decent. Despite
its datedness, there’s not a lot to seriously rankle me. There’s the fairytale-love-at-first-sight
thing, of course, and Aurora isn’t a terribly strong heroine. The movie doesn’t give her much a chance to be anything – most of her experiences
are exerted on her by outside forces, and the nature of the spell means she can’t
really have agency in her own rescue. Personality-wise,
she’s mainly just soft and pleasant. However,
I anticipated this going in, and it feels par-for-the-course for the times. In context, not hugely objectionable.
For the
positives, I enjoy the connection made between Aurora and Prince Phillip. Even though they skip tons of steps between
meeting and true love, “Once upon a Dream,” their song, puts a more mythic spin
on the relationship; Phillip’s arrival feels like Aurora’s dreams coming to
fruition. I also like that Phillip is
drawn to Aurora before he even sees her (by her singing voice) and that, upon
meeting, neither realizes they’ve actually been betrothed since Aurora was
born, allowing them to approach each other without baggage. And it helps that, by my recollection, Phillip
is the first Disney prince to have an actual personality. He’s ardent and a little cheeky, and he has
to bribe his horse to get it to do what he wants. In short, he’s entertaining, and it seems
reasonable that a teenage girl who’s been raised in seclusion would get hung up
on him.
It goes
without saying that, nonexistent motives or not, Maleficent is an excellent
villain. I mean, come on – the woman can
turn into a dragon! How cool is
that? The fairies are mostly fun, and I
like that, living incognito (ie, without magic,) they’re a little bumbling and
disaster-prone. I like the trope of
powerful beings having to slum it like us mortals. Since Aurora doesn’t get to be very hands-on,
it’s good that they’re fighting in her corner and it’s not just the prince
coming to her rescue. The fairies have a
lot to do, including contributions to
the action sequences. Lastly, there are
bits of sly humor that I didn’t expect at
all; I laughed out loud when Phillip entreats his father to stop living in
the past, reminding him, “It’s the 14th
century!”
Warnings
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