Before we get into my review of Beastly let me ask you a few questions. First, are you a female age 13 to 24? Second, have you read or watched any chapter of the Twilight saga and enjoyed it? Third, are you so desperate to find a partner that you would lock a girl you are infatuated with in your attic and read her poetry until she falls madly in love with your grotesque face? If you answered yes to any of the above questions then you should probably stop reading now because I’m probably going to hurt your feelings with what I’m about to say regarding this movie.
Beastly is quite possibly the most shallow, pandering, overwrought piece of excrement I’ve seen thrown on the silver screen in a long time. It all starts with a cast of characters who seem to have no rudder, no inner compass, and no parents to teach them right from wrong. (Apparently this is left up to the help in Beastly world.) Alex Pettyfer’s “Kyle” is one of the most unlikable leading characters I may have ever seen in a movie. The opening ten minutes of this film establish him as an egotistical, hateful, self-involved cretin whose laughable attempts to destroy those who he feels beneath him make him nigh un-redeemable. His father is apparently a famous newscaster who hasn’t given him the attention he deserves and the people he surrounds himself with are vapid, soulless ghouls. This makes Pettyfer’s character sad so he picks on the hot witch (Mary Kate Olsen in junior misses Goth gear) whose mere presence in his school is apparently the bane of his existence. Voila, you’re cursed to be ugly like Mary Kate. And by ugly I mean you’re still hot, you just have metal on your face and some cool tattoos. Oh, and nobody recognizes you anymore. Even though you still look pretty much the same and your voice is no different, you are now the weird guy who wears a hoody all the time that nobody pays attention to.
My second major issue with this movie is the story. In most movies the story is important; things need to make a certain amount of sense for people to follow what’s going on and enjoy the movie. Not in Beastly world. In this world you can stalk a girl you once mocked but secretly love, help her father cover up a murder you were involved in and then keep said girl locked in your attic until she’s “safe” (wink, wink). Now I totally understand the point of keeping her captive. Daniel Barnz is attempting to do a modern retelling of Beauty and the Beast, the classic story of not judging a book by its cover. Unfortunately for director Daniel Barnz we live in a modern world full of sickos and stalkers. Alex Pettyfer doesn’t come across as a good guy trying to save this poor girl from evil but as a creep keeping Vanessa Hudgins locked up till she goes all Stockholm syndrome and they can finally be together.
I could go on for days about how bad this movie was, about how Neil Patrick Harris and the Jamaican maid (Lindsay Gay Hamilton) played a role in a felony kidnapping while at the same time providing the comic relief but I digress. This was an awful movie that pandered to the lowest common denominator, people who aren’t old enough, or smart enough, to know a good movie from bad. Apparently you can show them some nice abs and a good smile, mix in a half assed romance story, and play some popular music over the trailer and you’ve got yourself a good opening weekend and you’ve made your budget back already. Hell, Twilight’s made a mint exploiting that same section of our society over and over again. You’d think they’d eventually learn. Oh well, bad movies get made every day and this movie will be quickly forgotten when the next pandering piece of crap hit’s the cinemas. Save yourself some grief and skip this one…
