Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, review: is Angelina Jolie the most bored-looking of them all?

Dir: Joachim Rønning. Cast: Angelina Jolie, Elle Fanning, Michelle Pfeiffer, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Harris Dickinson, Sam Riley, Ed Skrein, Imelda Staunton, Lesley Manville, Juno Temple, Robert Lindsay. PG cert, 119 min

Even by the standards of Angelina Jolie aloofness, her performance in Maleficent: Mistress of Evil sets a new bar. Sure, it’s the whole point of her title character, in Disney’s extravagant fantasy sequel, to float in the clouds, haughtily ignoring the concerns of lesser mortals, but there’s a fine line between projecting sub-zero disdain within your film and seeming to want the whole thing over and done with.

Hugely profitable though it was, 2014’s Maleficent was never a favourite with critics, who only had Jolie’s furious, horned bad-ass of a fairy godmother to latch onto. Here, there’s barely even that. The new film needs her twice: she’s required to show her face in the run-up to blonde princess Aurora (Elle Fanning) getting married, about which she has some predictably stern views, and then she must drag herself back for an immense showdown at the end.

In between these flashpoints, she’s got little to do but cool her heels in some arbitrary magical caverns with fellow fairy-folk, including new characters played by Chiwetel Ejiofor and Ed Skrein, while the dominant focus is elsewhere. She’s not so much Mistress of Evil here as Mistress of Barely Showing Up.

At least as much screen-time goes to Michelle Pfeiffer, in a generously showcased role as Aurora’s mother-in-law-to-be, Queen Ingrith. Kitted out with a fabulous pearl-and-diamond chainmail gorget she may be, but Pfeiffer can do wicked-witch scheming in her sleep, and practically does. We’ve seen so much of this pretty poison from her – in Stardust, The Witches of Eastwick and so on – that the excitement of her comeback in this multiplex context is stunted by the assignment. Is there any chance that Hollywood could cast her as something else? And maybe we could have the fresh pleasure of someone different (Debra Winger? Sharon Stone?) having a go?

There’s one set-piece where the film does bode well: a pre-nuptial banquet thrown by Aurora’s in-laws, with Maleficent as guest of honour on her best behaviour. Her goddaughter’s betrothed, Prince Phillip (a dashing Harris Dickinson, replacing Brenton Thwaites), and his father, King John (Robert Lindsay), can only wince and placate as Ingrith pokes away at her and a promising witch-off brews over the table. Jolie and Pfeiffer look alive when they get to brandish some face-to-face antagonism – then they spend the next hour in bored competition with the special effects.

Norwegian director Joachim Rønning, who served his Hollywood apprenticeship on the fifth Pirates of the Caribbean film, seems to be enslaving himself to franchises which dictate the most anonymous job possible. The trio of squeaky pixies played by Imelda Staunton, Lesley Manville and Juno Temple have been fine-tuned a little after their aggravating debut, but the script stops short of a total gagging order.

Meanwhile, Ejiofor has never looked more ripped than he does as a cave-dwelling fairy called Conall, outcast with all the others and brooding about war, but his whole subplot has the dramatic urgency of a screensaver. At least Sam Riley is ruefully charming in a low-key comic-relief turn as Diaval, Maleficent’s weary raven familiar.

The main worry for Mistress of Evil at the box office is that’s it’s arriving five years after the first one, and the target audience could have gone through their adolescence in the intervening time. Will the Maleficent hive still care? Will they care more than Jolie does?

The grand finale is a picturesque aerial siege, with our heroine’s winged allies being picked off in bursting puffs of red smoke, and the vertiginous castle walls looming behind as Pfeiffer calls the shots. It gives you plenty to look at, even if you could say it’s been Avatarred and feathered to within an inch of its life. It’s the big, echoing hole in the middle – insert story, any story – that no one has figured out how to plug.

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