Maleficent: Mistress of Evil
U/A; Adventure, Family, Fantasy
Cast: Angelina Jolie, Elle Fanning, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Sam Riley, Harris Dickinson, Ed Skrein, Michelle Pfeiffer
Director: Joachim Ronning
Rating: 

This follow-up (rather inevitable) to the 2014 box office attraction is predictably programmed to deliver the goods in a similar bouquet - with a new evil queen, a titular character who looks evil but is benevolent, a fairytale young romance that is so sugary sweet that it has the power to triumph over all evil and overwhelming computer-generated imagery to make it all look like the fantasies (Charles Perrault's Sleeping Beauty & several other cross-media expanded adaptations) this work has amalgamated.

This attempt to lend the antagonist of Sleeping Beauty a more ameliorating persona is rather mish-mashed in terms of ideology while the target audience it hopes to attract is a little older and more aware of the world around them. Tiny tots might find this version a little too scary and unpalatable given the war scale dynamics of evil that it throws up as an end play.