Beastly [PG]

Kyle is spoilt, rich, and beautiful… on the outside. Completely captivated by his physical beauty, Kyle foolishly chooses Kendra, a witch masquerading as a high school student, as his new target for humiliation. Unfazed by Kyle’s cruelty to her, Kendra decides to teach him and a lesson and transforms him into a horrible, disfigured and tattooed monster, to reflect what he is on the inside. Now Kyle has one year to find someone who can see past the surface and love him or else he will remain beastly forever. 

An obvious modern adaptation of the timeless romantic tale, Beauty and the Beast, Beastly is not a film that must be seen, but that’s not to say that it’s not interesting. 

Kyle is spoilt, rich, and beautiful… on the outside. Completely captivated by his own physical beauty, Kyle foolishly chooses Kendra, a witch masquerading as a high school student, as his latest target for humiliation. Unfazed by Kyle’s cruelty towards her, Kendra decides to teach him a lesson and transforms him into a hideously scarred and tattooed monster to reflect what he is on the inside, or else he will remain beastly forever. 

Now Kyle has only one year to find someone who can look beyond the surface and love him. Well it’s nowhere near as romantic as Disney’s Beauty and the Beast and Jean Cocteau’s La Belle et la Bete could give it a run for its money, but Beastly was not without a certain charm and appeal. A modern take on the classic romantic tale, Beastly went down a much darker and more gothic path what with the witch (played by Mary-Kate Olsen) looking like some strange Lady GaGa clone and the “beast” being scarred and tattooed. We even the hear a new word: “frankenskank.” I think what most both held my attention but at the same time repelled me about this film was that it didn’t really know what it wanted to be. Obviously there is the tale of romance and beauty being within. But then there was the layer of macabre and gothic that represented the conflict and the lesson. On top of this, there was a fair amount of modern references and characters that provided light-hearted comic relief, which in all honesty really felt out of place in this film. It if was subdued and subtly funny and romantic like Twilight, it might have worked. But at the end of this endless stream of words, what I’m trying to say is that this is really just a Beauty and the Beast knock-off done in the style of Twilight. Thankfully it is short so there’s not a great amount of stuff to get angered or conflicted by. 

Starring Alex Pettyfer, Vanessa Hudgens, Mary-Kate Olsen, Dakota Johnson, Lisa Gay Hamilton, and Neil Patrick Harris, Beastly was an interesting interpretation of the classic tale of romance, but ultimately did not know what it was trying to be. Filled with the macabre, flora, magic, lessons, drama, comedy, and, of course, romance, it was a film that I didn’t mind sitting down to watch, but am glad that I will not have to sit through it again.