Miamiartzine.com kid critic Carter Sharp, 9, loves movies, and lives in Fort Lauderdale. Here she reviews the new Disney movie Maleficent.
Maleficent is about the villain who put a spell on Sleeping Beauty from the old Disney fairy tale. There are differences in this new movie from Disney’s old Sleeping Beauty: First, the kings (the prince’s father and the princess’s father) don’t meet each other in this one. Secondly, the witch in Sleeping Beauty didn’t have wings like Maleficent does in the new movie. And Maleficent in the old movie is mean all the way through the story, and in the new one, she is sometimes almost kind and seems generous.
The movie starts out when Maleficent is very young. She gets to be the protector of the village, the Moors. The village is pretty and it is valuable. There are treasures like emeralds and diamonds there. Maleficent has powers that she can create heroes that come out of the ground to protect her village and herself. These are just some of the creatures in the movie that are interesting to watch because they look like they are from another world. There is also Maleficent’s crow that she turns into a man and then back into a crow.
Maleficent meets a human boy (she is not human, she is a fairy) when she is young and she becomes his girlfriend. He ends up tricking her when the two become older because he will do whatever he must to become King. He does this when he finds out when the old king, who is ready to die, says that if one of them brings back Malificent’s head, the person could become king. The soldier comes back with something of Malificent’s that is valuable to her. It is worthy enough to make him King.
When the new king is crowned, Malificent finds out that he is her boyfriend, Stefan. Because he had betrayed her, she tries to find a way to defeat him. She gets her chance when he and his new wife have a baby. When the people of the town are invited to see the baby named Aurora, three fairies want to give the baby a wish. Only two of the fairies get to finish their wish: one is the gift of happiness and the other is beauty. When the third fairy starts to give Aurora a wish, Maleficent appears. She decides to grant her own wish for Aurora. She proclaims that on Aurora’s 16th birthday she will fall into a deep sleep after she cuts her finger (this is like the old story), but Malificent, who doesn’t believe in true love after what happened to her says there is a way to break the curse, but only with the kiss of true love.
The baby is taken to a cottage for the fairies to protect her after the king decides it is safer for his daughter to live there than in the castle. At first, the witch hates the little "beast," but then she starts calling her "Beastie" and watches the little girl from behind trees and from outside of the cottage. When Aurora grows up and meets Malificent in the forest, she tells her that she thinks Malificent is her fairy godmother because she remembers her and the crow watching over her. She says she’s seen their shadows all her life.
One of the best scenes in the movie is when the crow flies into the cottage and sees that the baby is hungry and thirsty. He brings her a flower milk bottle and rocks her cradle with his beak. This is very sweet.
Later Malificent wishes she could reverse her curse (that is not like the old movie) because she likes the girl. When she put the curse on her she was so lost in revenge that she didn’t notice that Aurora was an innocent and good child. She realizes even she can’t take the spell off of Aurora.
SHOULD YOU GO?
For parents wondering if they should take their kids to see Malificent, I think that both kids and parents will really like it. If you have a younger child and you watch the previews, it will make it look like it’s not appropriate for little kids, but I think it is fine for kids ages 4 and older. There is some fighting in the movie, but it isn’t that scary. There are some scary looking monsters that could frighten little kids.
The preview of the movie that I saw on television, is different than Maleficent turned out to be. The preview made it look like it was going to be about an evil witch, but it is not all about evil. This is a wonderful story that has a happy ending. It is a fantastic movie.
