Beastly (2011)

Directed by: Daniel Barnz
Written by: Daniel Barnz, Alex Flinn
Cast: Vanessa Hudgens, Alex Pettyfer, Mary-Kate Olsen, Neil Patrick Harris, Lisa Gay Hamilton

It sure does suck to be ugly.

Not that Kyle Kingson (Alex Pettyfer) would know much about that; he's the handsomest bit of handsome at his school, and he sure does know it. He runs for Class President on the basis that his good looks alone should be worth voting for (seriously - that's his platform), and wins. He has a gorgeous girlfriend, tons of friends, and the adoration of his entire school. The world is his.

Things go awry when he makes the wrong move of inviting the school witch to the big dance, only to stand her up at the dance's front door, loudly, in public, and with oodles of mean contempt. The witch (and we know she's a witch because she dresses like it's 1991 again at Helter Skelter of Hollywood) decides to cast her own judgment in the form of a powerful spell. Kyle suddenly finds himself horrifically misshapen, with weird tattoos, body jewelry, and scars. He's told that this change is to be permanent unless he can find someone who would actually love him. But who would love him now?

Well, certainly not his successful and rich father. The man is a mentor of physical vanity. His world view is summed up in the line "People like people who look good - anyone who says differently is either ugly or dumb!" Once he sees his uglified son, he ships him off to a small mansion in the suburbs of New York with a private tutor and maid, so that no one will have to look at him.

Kyle Kingson, now calling himself 'Hunter', becomes very sad. Being ugly sucks. He starts stalking the girl he kind of liked when he was handsome and popular, and soon finds that her junkie dad owes money to some gun toting drug dealers and is in serious danger. Through some conniving and silliness, he arranges to have the girl stay with him in his little mansion, safe from the evil drug dealers.
It is in this that we have the rather ham-fisted resemblance to the original story of Beauty and the Beast. Young Lindy Taylor (Vanessa Hudgens) must dwell in this mysterious house with this mysterious stranger. Hunter, in turn, must reveal himself to her and somehow romance her into falling in love with him, lest he be a 'beast' forever and ever.

This romance is pain; this is horrible putrescent absurdity, boiling in banal idiocy and choking on its own partially regurgitated offal. Watching Hunter romance Lindy Taylor is akin to watching monkeys pee in their own mouths on Youtube. "That's horrible! Stop doing that!" you might shout at the screen - but they just won't listen. It's on and on with the bad poetry readings, the sappiest of sappy love letters, and the drinking of urine straight from his magically mutilated penis while you stare at the screen with your mouth in a horrified 'NOOOOO' shape, begging for it to please, please for the love of God, stop.

Okay, that last part doesn't happen; but it might as well have. I don't think any woman - or even a young and naive girl - would be charmed by someone as sappy, weak, and whiny as Hunter. I don't care if he looks like a tank rolled back and forth over his face - that has nothing to do with it. He's a wimp. It has nothing to do with how he looks. The last thing a woman finds attractive is weakness, and Hunter is about as tough as a big fluffy cloud in the shape of something stupid that no one likes.

Which is strange, considering Hunter is supposed to be the 'Beast' of the story. Usually in modern takes of Beauty and the Beast, the cursed monster will somehow demonstrate a great inner courage and strength of character that woes his love interest into mutual adoration. Hunter doesn't do that; he whines her into loving him, with great puppy eyes, a trembling bottom lip, and sweaty and awkward love letters that are shoved into her palm before he runs away to cower in a nearby corner. True - there is one moment where he punches a drug dealer which is completely inconsistent with the rest of his behavior - and this doesn't even count because Lindy Taylor doesn't even know it's him. Her only interaction with him is just whiny, big-eyed neediness shouting "PLEASE LOOOVE MEEEEEEE!" which never works at all - at least all the times I've tried it.

The entire premise of the film is that it is what is inside us that matters most - one of the film's taglines is even "It's what's underneath." Unfortunately the film contradicts its own message in a complete failure to comprehend its own morality tale. In the universe of Beastly, Kyle Kingson was wonderfully successful - and this is only from how good he looked. He was class president, had a beautiful girlfriend, and he was popular with a promising life set ahead of him. The only thing that screwed this up was "magic", and since magic doesn't really exist it seems that Beastly is saying that possessing good looks really does grant you a better life than everyone else.

The mixed message continues with his father. The man is the #1 anchorman of New York and prides himself that his great smile has earned so much success and cash. Obviously good looks have really worked well for the man. He is certainly never shown as suffering in the least - actually, he's constantly gloating about how happy, rich, and successful he is. What 'lesson' is this?

The witch who cast the spell against Kyle - you know, the one who is supposedly teaching the moral lesson - is arguably the vainest of the entire film. In every scene she has an entirely new outfit, and let me tell you, those glitzy goth garments don't come cheap. Her makeup is immaculate and she changes her hair style every single day; she obviously cares very, very deeply about how she looks. Lastly, the uglified Hunter - who's supposed to be learning about how looks don't really matter - chooses to fall for a girl who is absolutely adorable. Even Hunter himself - who is supposed to be horrific to look at - is completely ripped with a full six-pack and obviously works out every single day.

It feels like they took the standard morality lesson of 'beauty is skin deep' and then handed the concept over to a corporate film factory who said, 'Great! Now let's pack the film full of attractive people like we always do and completely ignore the message of the film!" The cautionary tale against vanity is a simple thing - childishly simple, even - yet the makers of this film just completely screwed it up beyond all repair and recognition.

A much more interesting film project would be a 'film within a film', where someone curses Daniel Barnz with having made this banal piece of crap and charges that he must find someone to love Beastly within a year or suffer being known as a bad director for the rest of his career. It just might become a reality. The clock is ticking Barnz.

This is a Day Two Review.

Rating: (1 out of 5):