Maleficent? Magnificent, more like!
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THE age-old battle of good versus evil has been a staple ingredient of Disney output from the word go.
Drawn in starkest black and white, the pantomime formula of someone to cheer and someone to boo - someone to love and someone to hate - has worked well enough down the years without placing any undue demands on a mainstream audience.
Or to put that another way, without the need to make the audience think too much for itself.
And this is what makes Disney's Maleficent such an enticing propsect, mixing up good and evil within a single character and messing with easy notions of how fairy tales are supposed to unwind.
Indeed one of two taglines used to promote the film simply states: "Don't believe the fairy tale". The other is somewhat more sinister: "Evil has a beginning".
The good news this summer holiday period is that the Angelina Jolie starrer, rated PG (Parental Guidance), is indeed suitable for most children and will doubtless delight a few of the adults dragged along, too.
Indeed the audience I watched it with at Eden Court had no shortage of grey heads, so don't think that it's "just" for kids.
The blurn: A beautiful, pure-hearted young woman, Maleficent (Jolie) has an idyllic life growing up in a peaceable forest kingdom - until one day when an invading army threatens the harmony of the land.
Maleficent rises to be the land's fiercest protector, but she ultimately suffers a ruthless betrayal by a childhood sweetheart. It is an act that begins to turn her pure heart to stone.
Bent on revenge, Maleficent faces a battle with the invading king's successor and, as a result, places a curse upon his newborn infant Aurora (a very simpery Elle Fanning)
As the child grows, Maleficent realizes that Aurora holds the key to peace in the kingdom - and perhaps even her own true happiness as well.
As you might expect, Jolie plays the bad ass self-proclaimed queen of her land to perfection. To paraphrase Mae West, when she's good, she's very good, but when she's bad, she's better. When she sets out looking for vengeance, you're with her every step of the way (or was that just me?)
The unravelling story of redemption is packed with special effects (from war-mongering trees to fire-spouting dragons) and a smattering of laugh out loud lines.
There are questionmarks: why does the ruthless king leave his at-risk daughter in the charge of three idiotic, if amusing, fairies? But leave those niggling concerns aside. It's well worth a watch.
Is it suitable for your child? I was accompanied by a seven and ten year old boy and girl respectively, both of whom loved it. I'd suggest below seven really would be based on parental knowledge - though frankly I was scared to death by some of the Disney originals well after that age and lived to tell the tale.
Also, I'd venture, a great girls night out film too. (You'll see what I mean...)
Maleficent is being screened at Eden Court until Thursday, July 17. For times see here.
