SPOILER ALERT
Message for teens: Always be nice to the bald recluses you live with because they might turn out to be the hot rich guy you used to crush on in high school and if you fall in love with him, he’ll totally pay for you to go to Machu Picchu with him. No joke.
Despite an entertaining premise -a youthful contemporary spin on the Beauty and the Beast classic – Beastly is uncomfortably lacking.
With a screenplay too smart for the director (odd, since Daniel Barnz both penned and helmed the film adaptation from Alex Flinn’s novel), Beastly’s often charming dialogue acts like an unexpected house guest in this fluffy, shallow production. The best one-liners and most intelligent references are hurried over by the young cast, who seem ill at ease with the screenplay’s indie stylings. Only stage/screen vet Neil Patrick Harris seems in on the joke and manages to evoke some easy laughter from the primarily pre-teen/parent demographic (also uncomfortable, the adult language was a little thick for its intended audience). Besides the mumbling, mushy delivery from Vanessa Hudgens and (can I say this without laughing) Mary-Kate Olsen, there were some good moments in cast performance. If a little too likable on screen to be truly “beastly,” Alex Pettyfer is certainly easy on the eyes and plays with some real honesty (The Hunger Games casting rumors are a little more interesting).
Besides a tenuously-constructed plot (drug addict dad shoots dealer and is blackmailed into turning teenage daughter over to bald, tattooed rich son of uber-wealthy anchorman who makes him live in a separate apartment because he’s so ugly…okaaaay…), the most disturbing element of Beastly is its strange morality: Goth witch girl has the power to cure blindness and help refugees from other countries but chooses instead to use her powers to punish the snotty, popular boy who hurt her feelings because he doesn’t understand compassion for the weak. Right. Okay. Don’t worry, she cures the blindness and saves the refugee family after the popular boy learns his lesson. Heart-warming. Truly.
Ms. e.lizabeth gives this uneven teen romance a C minus (for NPH’s sake) and a “try harder next time.”
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