More quarantine viewing: Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (don't get your hopes up)

So... seeing as I thoroughly disliked the first Maleficent film, why did I even bother with the sequel? Well, one, at the time I saw it I was staying at home for two weeks, shielding the world around me from my mild cough and watching a lot of telly (heroic, right?). Two, I had seen the trailer and... actually, it didn't look too bad. Of course, Maleficent wouldn't turn out to be the real Big Bad - that part was clearly meant for Michelle Pfeiffer's icy Queen Ingrith  - but there were hints that she would at least be allowed to be wrong. I liked the idea of her being so overprotective of Aurora that she disapproves of Aurora's suitor Prince Philip. For once, that "letting go of a loved one" message that has marred more than one Disney film (and Pixar film) could be put to some good use. The idea that Maleficent, who first became a villain when she cursed Aurora and (in this franchise, nowhere else!) was saved by her love for the girl, would turn villainous again because of that same love for that same girl was pretty neat. Maleficent would learn in the end that Aurora had enough love for both her and Philip, and that could ideally make for a better redemption arc than in the first film. The only thing that had me worried was the introduction of a whole fairy (or "fey") species to which Maleficent belonged. Please, please, not the "alien species standing in for put-upon minority" plot line which I absolutely hate!

Maleficent: Mistress of Evil turned out to be neither as good as I'd hoped it could be, nor as awful as I feared it could also easily be. There's still the glaring problem, made more apparent by the misleading film title, of having a Maleficent who is actually quite nice. This, as I've already ranted about when writing about the first film, is something no-one asked for. People wanted to see more of a fascinating villain - not some misunderstood Moor Queen who isn't very villainous at all except that one time when she, um, cursed a baby. The pompous narrative voice picks up the same "you're all wrong about Maleficent" thread as last time at the start of the film, sounding appalled that Maleficent is, when film two takes place, still regarded as evil, although she herself broke Aurora's curse. Yeah, well... that doesn't make it OK to cast it in the first place, does it? If you're going to rehabilitate a fairy-tale villain (or just about any famous villain of fiction), by all means give him or her relatable motives and show their ability to mend their ways. But don't pretend they never did anything bad to start with. That just doesn't work. Also, the whole "flipping the coin" scenario of making the bad guy the good guy and vice versa adds no nuance to a story - it's still black and white, only the parts have been swapped. King Stephan in Maleficent had little more depth than Maleficent in the animated Sleeping Beauty as a villain, only he was a lot less cool.

Anyway... this being the follow-up, Maleficent's lack of evil-doing is less of a problem than in the first film. We have already internalised that in this particular fictional universe, old Mal is really all right. So when it turns out that the whole jealousy of Philip thing won't be that big a deal, it is disappointing but not too surprising. On the plus side, the "oh, the poor fey are oppressed by the ghastly humans" angle isn't played up either. Instead, there are faults on both sides, and the message is a harmless enough "let's all just get along" one. I have to say this much, I enjoyed watching this film more than the first. With Maleficent we got the standard "poor little misunderstood villain" story, which always makes me think of the old cartoon where the wolf (unsuccessfully) tried to convince a jury that actually Red Riding Hood and her grandmother were trying to kill him. At least, Maleficent: Mistress of Evil isn't that. The question is: what is it?

Part of what makes this film interesting enough to watch once (but probably never again) is that it's a complete mess. The revoltingly cutesy moor critters are still with us from the first film, as are the three fairies who, if still pretty annoying and a far cry from their charming animated counterparts, are a bit more bearable this time. New additions are a baby root (who looks like a hedgehog) and a baby mushroom, both with large doll-like eyes. But mixed in with the kids' stuff are darker fantasy elements, and the mixture is an odd one. There's a huge battle sequence at the end where there's some real bloodshed. Granted, so we don't know most of the victims as more than parts of the human/magical creature collective, but there are some named casualties: one of the three fairies gets turned into a flower by the humans' secret weapon, and that's never undone. Also, high stakes in a fantasy drama usually mean that a bit of effort will be put into the characterisation, so we care who lives and who dies. Not here: the characters are paper thin. Ingrith has a pretty interesting motive, but once she has stated it, nothing is done with it; we don't get Maleficent reacting to it in any way. Aurora and Philip are unfailingly bland. Robert Lindsay's acting talents are completely wasted in the part as Philip's peace-loving dad. Diaval the raven man is pretty sweet, though.

What puzzles me is who this film's intended audience is. Surely, the cutesiness of the CGI, the cheap jokes and the poor characterisation are off-putting to anyone over the age of eight. On the other hand, small children (and maybe even somewhat larger children) could be severely traumatised by scenes such as the one where the moor creatures are locked inside a chapel and have salvos of toxic magic dust fired at them from the chapel organ. So who's supposed to watch this, exactly? The answer may be, sadly, fairy-tale nerds like me who want something to complain about.