LogFAQs > #983228804

Sleeping Beauty
Originally released January 29, 1959

There are a LOT of parallels in this movie with the story of Snow White. Mainly the parts about the princess living in a woodland shack with magic beings, a curse leading to a coma, and the curse being broken by a kiss but it has to be from a prince.

To start the movie off, Maleficent is butthurt about not being invited to the princess Aurora's birth party (where she's immediately engaged to a 10-year-old boy), so she crashes it and curses the princess to touch a spinning wheel on her 16th birthday and die. One of the three good fairies, Merryweather, adjusts the terms of the curse so she'll just fall asleep until she receives true love's kiss.

Not satisfied with this resolution, King Stefan burns every spinning wheel in the kingdom, a knee-jerk reaction that certainly won't have any long-term ramifications on the economy. Another fairy, Flora, comes up with a plan to take the newborn Aurora and raise her anonymously in the forest where there are no spinning wheels I guess. Hear me out, it seems like a better plan would be to raise Aurora normally as a princess so Maleficent doesn't get suspicious, but let her know about the curse so they can all make preparations. Maybe lock her hands in a metal box on her 16th birthday.

Regardless, that 16th birthday arrives, and Aurora -- going by the alias "Briar Rose" -- is sent out to the woods to pick berries, where she has an encounter with a 26-year-old man that she doesn't realize is Prince Phillip. While she dances the three fairies are turning her birthday preparations into a Three Stooges skit, eventually involving magic and giving their cottage away because they fight over what color to make the dress.

Aurora doesn't take it well when she's revealed to be a princess whose marriage is already arranged, and the fairies take her back to the castle. Meanwhile, Phillip has already managed to Duck Season/Rabbit Season his own father, King Hubert, into giving him permission to marry a peasant girl instead. And, you know what, I'm gonna let Hubert into the Good Guy Club with Timothy Q. Mouse, because he actually takes it pretty well and is incredibly happy to call the arranged marriage off and let his son marry for love and not politics.

Immediately after Aurora is returned to the castle, Maleficent shows up and creates/reveals a hidden passage in her fireplace leading to a tower with a spinning wheel. Aurora boops it and falls asleep. The fairies then decide to put the entire kingdom to sleep until she's kissed and wakes up, a very short-sighted plan because if this takes more than two days, everyone's dead from dehydration. Flora also learns that Phillip is the mystery man that Aurora fell in love with, and they rush back to the cottage to get him, but Maleficent already did because she caught on to a simple fact that the fairies didn't: Even if the guy Aurora fell in love with isn't the prince she's baby-engaged to, he's still her true love, and therefore the man who can break the curse.

So the fairies infiltrate her castle, where they witness Maleficent being a dumbass. Rather than just kill Phillip and remove him from the equation, thus making the curse permanent, she instead locks him in the dungeon and tells him who Aurora is, where she is, and why he needs to kiss her. The fairies break him out, give him a new magic sword and shield, and Phillip is now fully equipped and motivated to become a CERTIFIED BADASS.

He fights off a horde of goblins, parkours down to his horse, cuts through a forest of thorns, and then has a one-on-one duel with a giant draconic sorceress. After the fairies buff his sword a little more, he hurls the fucking thing into Maleficent's heart (she's still a massive dragon at this point), killing her and ending all her curses except the one that requires him to kiss a girl who is inappropriately younger than him. The End.

And, yeah, I couldn't get it out of my head that even though he is by far the most interesting and badass of the Disney Princes we've seen so far, Phillip is still a 26-year-old man who is creepily attracted to a 16-year-old girl. Yes, I know that the movie is set in medieval times where this was commonplace. No, I don't fucking care.

But it's still a really solid movie. There are a lot of echoes of Snow White (and even a little Cinderella), but damn if it doesn't improve on those echoes. Maleficent is an incredibly cool, competent (except for the above lapse in judgment), and threatening villain. Phillip is the best prince so far. Even the Good Fairies are proactive and efficient, even if they do needlessly overcomplicate the situation sometimes. The animation is beautiful and "Once Upon A Dream" is a great and iconic song.

I can't think of a single genuine flaw to take a point away for.

Final Score: 10/10