There's less to"Beastly"than meets the eye - and what meets the eye is no great shakes, either. It's a new spin on a classic that doesn't seem to have read the source material before deciding to update it, leading to some awkward interpretations at exam time.
Still, a teenage redo of"Beauty and the Beast"isn't, in and of itself, an awful idea. Most modern teen movies involve mean girls, superbad dorks or clueless consumers, or some variation on those themes, with only slight emotional take-away. And if anyone could benefit from a hipped-up take on this tale, it's high-schoolers.
"Beastly,"from a young adult novel byAlex Finn, at least tries to get a handle on that world. For anyone over 18, though, this brisk but slight movie may feel like time in detention.
Kyle (Alex Pettyfer,"I Am Number Four") is a hunky, rich, vacuous teen running for a student committee position. The super-successful, vain son of an equally empty-souled TV anchor (Peter Krause), Kyle has disdain for anyone not as cool, or hot, as he is. He saves a special cruelty for Kendra (vampyMary-Kate Olsen), a Goth student who calls herself a witch and stalks around looking likeGary Oldmanin"Dracula."
At a school dance, Kendra puts a curse on Kyle, damning him to life as a scarred freak until he becomes a better person and finds someone to accept him.
Holed up in aBrooklynbrownstone, Kyle decides that person is Lindy ("High School Musical's"Vanessa Hudgens), an altruistic classmate attending Kyle's elite school on scholarship. When Lindy's drug-addict father puts her in danger, Kyle takes her in - though she doesn't know he's her former crush, and that only her full-fledged love can transform him, as long as it arrives before the tattooed flowers on his arm bloom.
Getting all the pieces of the story, familiar to this film's audience fromDisney's 1991 animated gem, into place requires a lot of contortion."Beastly"becomes embarrassingly awkward as it twists and turns to get Kyle alone, to get Lindy into his sphere and to manipulate their changes of heart.
What it gets most wrong is how easily Lindy accepts the gruesome fellow calling himself"Hunter"and wearing a hood (he must be familiar withRon Perlman's 1980s TV beast). It turns out she thought the jackass Kyle was"kinda bitchin.'"
Hmm. That ends up stunting a lot of the characters' growth, since Kyle - played by Pettyfor as either a strutting or sulking entitlement prince - now has to just get Lindy to see past the crazy-looking scars. (They really aren't so bad; he could be inLady Gaga's entourage, or maybe a villain in aVin Dieselflick.) But, wait: When Kyle shows Lindy his mauled face, she shrugs and says,"Not so bad."So much for overcoming first impressions.
That kind of grading-on-a-curve makes writer-directorDaniel Barnz's movie less a life lesson than a Very Special Episode of"Charmed."And its romance is thuddingly manufactured, as is the appearance ofNeil Patrick Harrisas a blind tutor hired by Kyle's father.
The"How I Met Your Mother"star strolls drolly through scenes, dispensing witticisms and wisdom, and making the movie slightly more palatable. Harris can't save things, but at least he's mature enough to know that beasts can smell fear, so he never breaks a sweat.
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