Sleeping Beauty

A predictably impressive Disney picture, Sleeping Beauty follows Mary Costa’s Princess Aurora as she, through no fault of her own, raises the ire of the palpably malevolent Maleficent (Eleanor Audley). There’s little doubt that Sleeping Beauty instantly establishes itself as one of Disney’s most impressively-animated endeavors, as the picture’s been suffused with a consistently eye-popping visual sensibility that remains a highlight from start to finish – with the artful atmosphere going a long way towards compensating for a periodically sluggish narrative. And while the film, even at 75 minutes, is perhaps never as engrossing as one might’ve hoped, Sleeping Beauty, which admittedly does boast a handful of undeniably electrifying digressions and sequences (eg Maleficent hypnotically beckons Aurora to her doom), generally comes off as a top-tier Disney release that is, to be sure, a whole lot darker than some of the company’s other efforts.

*** out of ****