Beastly
by Dante Rosario on March 4th, 2011
The Players: Alex Pettyfer, Vanessa Hudgens, Mary-Kate Olsen, Lisa Gay Hamilton, and Neil Patrick Harris.
The Game Plan: Beauty and the Beast gets a modern day reboot with Alex Pettyfer, of I Am Number Four fame staring as Kyle, an arrogant self absorbed rich kid at a private school who believes his good looks and wealth make him a cut above the rest. In Kyle’s world the beautiful people are better than everyone else, until he crosses paths with the self proclaimed witch at his school and she puts a hex on him that brings his ugliness on the inside to the surface, and naturally Kyle’s curse can only be broken if someone falls in love with him. A scared and disfigured Kyle retreats into a life of self imposed seclusion and only allows his nanny and tutor to see him. Over time Kyle begins to learn that the true love he needs to free himself from his prison has been right there all along.
Dante’s Thoughts: The story of Beauty and the Beast is one of the most beloved fairy tales of all time. Variations of the story about a lonely cursed nobleman and the love that sets him free have become classic movies and television series, if only Beastly was the same caliber of production as the 1946 French classic La Belle et la Bête, or more recent versions like the widely popular television series which ran on CBS in the late 1980’s, and of course the wildly popular 1991 animated version by Disney. The bar was certainly set high, but an attempt shouldn’t have been made if no one was going to put forth the effort to make a good film. At least that’s how it seemed.
Looking at the plot first, while the overall message of the original fairy tale is there, Beastly still has some serious problems. First off, for a modern adaptation of a classic romantic drama, this film has very little emotion, the hex put on Kyle by the Witch (Olsen Twin # Whatever) turns him into something that pretty much resembles a Hell Raiser/Jason Voorhees hybrid, …and everyone around him, including Kyle himself, acts like it’s no big deal. I guess getting turned into an Emo Goth monster by a wicked little witch is an everyday occurrence in this day and age.
Second, the circumstances that lead to the Beauty Lindy (Vanessa Hudgens) coming to live with the Beast Kyle are nowhere near the other versions, which made no sense to me considering that’s always been the biggest draw of the Beauty and the Beast story. Lastly, and perhaps the most baffling part of this movie for me was the poor quality of the acting. There is little emotion and from start to finish and there are too many instances where the performances on screen not only seem and feel contrived, but they are just plain bad.
Touchdowns: The only scoring drives, and barely, come from the fact that the overall message of the original fairy tale remains the same in this movie. In Beastly true beauty is what’s inside a person, and you’ll learn that lesson even if it takes Mary-Kate Olsen turning you into a monster. There are also a number of good laughs, most of which come from Kyle’s blind tutor Will Fratalli played by Neil Patrick Harris. Will acts as sort of comedic life coach for Kyle guiding him with anecdotal lessons all while poking fun of him.
Penalties: Holding call against the acting… And a flag against the cheesy dialogue riddled with numerous bad one-liners that I hoped would disappear after the first few scenes. Unfortunately, the bad dialogue ended up sticking around for the entire movie, which is a shame because the story alone gave this film a fighting chance…but that gets completely derailed by the poor execution of the plot, and by the end there wasn’t much of a movie left to save.
End of Game Summary: Since you already feel like you’re watching the classic tale of true love and inner beauty on fast-forward in the theater, as Beastly whips through the emotion and drama that is supposed to be a modern retelling of Beauty and the Beast, waiting to see it on DVD so you can actually chose to fast forward through this film, is probably a good thing considering how bad this movie is.
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Wouldnt of known this movie was this bad from the preview!!