Beastly (2011): *

Beastly, based on Alex Finn’s novel, is a modern retelling of the classic tale of Beauty and the Beast. Kyle (Alex Pettyfer), the arrogant superficial son of a famous news presenter, is campaigning to become president in his high school’s Green committee. Not out of concerns of the environment, but because it will look good on his college applications, which he states to his fellow students. Kyle wins the election on the basis of popularity and being handsome, angering the high school’s witch Kendra (Mary-Kate Oslen) into placing a curse on Kyle, changing his appearance. With only a year to find someone to say ‘I love you’ to break the curse, could the kind-hearted Lindy (Vanessa Hudgens) be the one to see the good underneath Kyle’s exterior? 

If Beastly could be epitomised in one word, that word would be shallow, ironic considering the core message of Beauty and the Beast is about looking beyond shallow appearances to a person’s true nature. Beastly’s idea of an ugly monster is giving Alex Pettyfer tattoos, making him bald and adding a couple of red welts to his face. This film’s idea of romance is Kyle stalking Lindy through the streets of New York and Kyle essentially forces Lindy unknowingly to stay with him, by blackmailing her dad. You know, the foundations for all good relationships. There is no chemistry between Kyle and Lindy, absolutely none, zilch, not even an ember of feeling. They only have one thing in common, they both have rubbish dads. Kyle and Lindy simply go through the motions of the usual romantic activities – reading poems, writing letters, dubbing over Korean TV – with the hope that that will be enough to convince this audience they are deeply in love. It’s not. 

Well, if the onscreen romance is a failure, that is nothing compared to writer/director’s Daniel Barnz’s script. It is ear-wrenchingly awful. Beastly includes all the terrible clichéd high schooler lines and phrases, such as ‘Embrace the suck’, ‘rad’ and ‘The thinking thing killed!’ Then it veers into the ‘deep’ thoughts that young adults have, in an almost parodic way that is insulting to the teenaged audience this film was undoubtedly aimed at. As Kyle deleted his not-Facebook page, he types out the reason why he is deactivating his account, ‘I am no more.’ As Lindy looks back at her homebound period with Kyle on a trip to Kyle’s lake-side mansion, she announces that, ‘This cage set me free.’ Barnz’s direction is not quite as bad as his screenwriting, but not by much.  Nearly all the scenes in the city are shot in neon oranges purples blues and greens, creating a sickly colour palette onscreen. His directorial choices are very on-the-nose, from using green lighting for the Witch’s scenes, the opening credit shots of semi-naked people on billboard adverts to the very literal soundtrack selections for certain ‘romantic’ scenes.

Alex Pettyfer is not the most accomplished actor, although relatively still new to films having only acted sporadically throughout his career, compared to other young actors. Pettyfer’s performance as Kyle swings wildly between over-the-top and almost nonchalant, laughably kicking the wall in frustration when he doesn’t get his own way. Pettyfer also fails to convey any of the inner goodness within his character, which somehow the other characters are able to see, during the first half of the film. Vanessa Hudgens does slightly better as Lindy, the warm-hearted yet slightly sassy love interest. Hudgens has certainly nailed down the wide-eyed look, but there is little else to her character. Neil Patrick Harris makes an appearance as Kyle’s blind tutor, making a token effort to inject a bit of desperately needed humour but to no avail. Lisa Gay Hamilton is lumped with the Jamaican cleaner/surrogate mother role as Zola. Hamilton gives an earnest performance, but it is wasted in this film. 

Beastly is a shockingly poor fairy-tale adaptation, with lacklustre performances and the appalling dialogue acting as the final insult to the teenage audience’s intelligence.