BlackChampagne -- no longer new; improvement also in question.: Movie Review: Sleeping Beauty
Wednesday, August 05, 2009
Movie Review: Sleeping Beauty
The classic Disney cartoon. I think I must have seen it as a child at some point, but if so it didn't impress me enough to be memorable. The ending, with the stark black/yellow/green color scheme dragon, and the thicket of thorns and the weirdly-expressive white horse were kind of familiar, but maybe just because I'd seen photos (screenshots?) of them in more recent years. Nothing else in it really stood out in my memories, but I had a strong and instant affinity for the evil witch, Maleficent.
She's just awesome; great design, powerful character, awesome presence; I had no trouble at all rooting for her to win, and she's the most enjoyable and memorable of any character in any of the Disney films I've yet seen, in my rewatching session.
It's a forgiving score, but I'm rating it as I enjoyed it, now, as an adult. I had a peripheral awareness of the cartoon before I watched it, and I knew the origin story, but I came into this viewing with a virginal appreciation, and rated it by how it worked for me now. It could be nitpicked to death. The choral soundtrack is too prominent and somewhat obnoxious, like a too-loud men's choir bellowing in your ear from just off stage, distracting you from the events of the play. There are some good songs sung by the characters though, and most of the score is excellent and stirring.
The characters and plot are unoriginal and very predictable, but what do you expect? It's a fairy tale! They're not stereotypes, they're archetypes. Brave prince. Beautiful princess. Wicked witch. Kindly fairy godmother(s). Noble steed. Evil dragon. Etc. Dinging those elements in a review would be ridiculous. If it was a new movie released today, sure, I'd hit it for being so old fashioned and unoriginal. Hide bound. But it was released in 1959, and it plays things fairly straight, while throwing in some amusing touches. The good fairies are amusing and bumbling, the hero's horse is personable, the fat king is amusing, Maleficent's minions are scary/idiot/funny, etc.
I wish they'd perked up the prince a bit, though. The princess is totally passive and beautiful and rescue-able; not exactly a good role model for girls, but she is desirable, and that's what's required of her. The prince goes through the motions of being in love and fighting to rescue his maiden, but he's an automaton in the process. He lacks even a trace of personality or originality. Total Ken doll. And that hurts things, since we're supposed to be rooting for him to triumph.
So no, while there was some character variation, it wasn't cutting edge in 1959, and it's not now. That said, it wasn't trying to be anything more than a spirited telling of a classic fairy tale, and from our modern perspective it's impossible not to be somewhat jaded. After all, we've had sixty years of fairy tale deconstruction since then. Joseph Campbell. Shrek. Rocky and Bullwinkle's fractured fairy tales. Etc. If you watch this one today expecting wise-cracking sidekicks and post modern sensibilities, it'll suck. You have to cast back your mind and appreciate it with innocent eyes. I did so, with the aid of a large glass of Vignoles, and it was enjoyable.
While I had no clear memories of the cartoon, I had read the fable upon which it was based semi-recently. The plot of the Disney movie is of course um... Disney-fied. But it retains the basic structure of the original, and creates perhaps the most impressive and memorable of all Disney villains.
In the original story the newborn princess is to be blessed by 12 good witches. Eleven have delivered blessings unto her (Good thing, after all, who needs blessings more than the unopposed hereditary monarch of the land?), when one evil witch shows up, angry that she was not invited to the christening. She curses the child to die after pricking her finger on a spinning wheel, and vanishes. The 12th good witch can't undo the powerful curse, but she modifies it so that the girl will just fall into a sleep, until a prince awakens her with a kiss. (True love is not mentioned in the story, though it is in the movie. In the story all that matters is his birthright/pedigree.)
The king burns every spinning wheel in the land (How do they make thread after that? Dunno.), but on the girl's sixteenth birthday she wanders up to some forgotten attic and finds an old spinning wheel, and of course no one has told her of this prophecy so she fucks around with it, stabs herself, and out she goes. The entire castle falls into sleep with her, and IIRC, that lasts for a century, while an impenetrable barrier of thorns grows up around the outside. Who knew the gardeners were the most important of the king's servants?
Eventually some prince happens along and cuts through the thicket and kisses her (Kind of creepy, when you think about it. You find some suspended animation girl in an ancient haunted castle full of unrotting corpses, and you kiss her? Necrophilia?) and she wakes up, slips him some tongue, the castle wakes around her, and everyone is happily ever after.
The movie version is modified, I think fairly successfully. It's made more innocent and goofy, of course. Instead of 12 witches there are 3 fairies, and after 2 of them give baby girl Aurora blessings of beauty and song. (As if a princess needs those. How about charisma to inspire and intelligence to rule?) The evil witch, Malificent, shows up after blessing #2, and she makes the movie. Maleficent is just awesome. I'd seen photos of her online over the years, but the full impact of her has to be seen in motion.
She's regal and serene, but with a crazy, scary edge to her face and expressions. Her severe black gown with the purple trim rules, and the devil horns on her head wrap are perfect. When she walks there's no independent motion. No arm swinging or visible legs; just her whole form floating along, ghost-like. And very slowly, in no hurry, utterly sure of her power and might. I clicked back to watch her scenes several times, since she's just flawlessly executed.
Check out her first appearance at 7:45 of this video (you can watch the whole movie by continuing through the related files on You Tube).
Maleficent's curse is much the same, as is the counter spell, but then the story changes a lot, as the 3 fairies take the princess to live in secret with them, in an old cottage in the woods. Details get skimmed on a great deal, since next thing we know it's 16 years later, on the princess' birthday. She thinks the fairies are her aunts, and to avoid detection they've never used magic for the whole 15 years or told the girl anything about her origin or destiny. How they're surviving is a mystery; the aunts/fairies can't cook or sew, and all Aurora does is wander through the forest picking berries and singing to cuddly, anthropomorphized animals. She's never met anyone or been to town, the fairies don't keep a garden or pigs or even a flock of sheep, and they don't trade with anyone, or produce any goods. So what are they eating? Where do they get clothing? Who keeps up their cottage?
The day of her 16th birthday is the day of the movie, and stupidity reigns. The curse is that she'll die from the spindle before sunset on her 16th birthday, so in theory if she makes it past that point the curse will be broken and she'll be safe. (Why the seemingly all powerful Maleficent can't just fly over and curse her again when she's say, 17, is not to be thought about.) So the fairies keep her under lock and key all day on her birthday, right? No, of course not. They send her out into the forest to pick more fucking berries, so they can ineptly attempt to sew her a ball gown and bake her a birthday cake while she's gone. But their cooking and sewing are as expert as their strategy, so they give into temptation and start casting spells to make the gown and clean the house. Their spells are noticed by Maleficent's raven, it alerts the evil fairy, and when the good fairies smuggle Aurora into the castle that night, Maleficent's waiting for them. She leads the girl up to an attic where she poofs in a spindle and stabs her finger. Luckily, just that afternoon Aurora had met and fallen in love with a handsome young man, who just happens to be her betrothed prince. Which is handy, since the curse can only be broken by her true love.
Now not to contradict myself and start nit picking, but what kind of fucking strategy was that? The girl is in mortal danger until sunset on her 16th birthday. So the king and the fairies have a huge royal gala planned for that evening, and they're trying to sneak the girl into the castle before sunset. All the spying by the raven was irrelevant; everyone in the kingdom knew the princess was coming to a ball that evening, to be married to the prince. All Maleficent had to do was stake out the castle, find the girl, and spindle her. Which she does, when the fairies stupidly leave the girl alone for like, five minutes.
A nicer touch is after nailing the girl, Maleficent books ass to the cottage, and is in time to catch the prince coming to meet his new true love. Maleficent spirits him off to her Forbidden Mountain and locks him up, then taunts him with a gloriously cruel story. She's going to keep him until he's old and feeble, then let him go so he can awaken his true love. But she's ageless in her sleep, so he'll be too old to do more than awaken her before he dies, while she'll awake, think it's a moment later, and see her true love as an ancient man. Now that is a nice scheme. I almost applauded.
The good fairies sneak in and bust him out though, and there's a wild escape. Then the stuff I remembered, either from a previous viewing or just seeing photos. Maleficent surrounds the castle by impenetrable thorns, which are cinematically gorgeous; all black and spiky against the green backgrounds. The expressionless prince chops through them though, so Maleficent plays her trump card, transforming into a massive black dragon, that is about the coolest dragon ever seen on film. Not that detailed, but stylized and evil, and such a great color palette; all black with a purple snake's belly pattern of scales, wreathed by green flames, with glowing yellow eyes and mouth. It's just gorgeous, as is every appearance of Maleficent in the film. Sadly, the dragon fails, pausing to laugh and taunt in imminent triumph, giving the fairies time to enchant the prince's sword, which he throws and stabs the dragon in the heart. The prince then proceeds to deliver his necromantic kiss, and happily ever after ensues.
The story is simplicity itself, but everything in it is so powerful and archetypal that it's excellent. I didn't give it higher scores since it's just so simple. It's only 75 minutes long, and that's with a lot of padding; extraneous singing, additional fairy godmother hijinks, comically-feuding drunken kings, etc. A bit more story, and a bit of personality to the prince, and it would have been almost perfect. And earned almost perfect scores.
One thing I have wondered about while reading your reviews of the Disney classics is how much of a difference the fact that you don't instantly know the characters' voices makes. For me I think it would be huge. I could never watch Toy Story, for instance, because I could never see the main character as anything other than Tim Allen doing a cartoon, and it made it difficult to suspend disbelief.
The classics have the inestimable advantage of voices you don't recognize. If Sleeping Beauty had been voiced by like Mila Kunis, the prince by Keanu Reeves, and Maleficent by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, with exactly the same animation, I would bet you would judge this a lot more harshly.
Out of those 3 I only know who Keanu Reeves is anyway.
I also think that particular voice actors can greatly enhance characters in animation, if they design the character after the actor - The Fairy Godmother in Shrek 2 being Jennifer Saunders is a notable example.
