Monday, March 07, 2011
Beastly On The Outside
There's just something about classic fairytales that always gets even the most cynical person wondering about the power of unconditional love and whether it exists in this day and age. So I expected the modern day version of "Beauty and the Beast" in the form of the movie "Beastly" to be an interesting watch.
The story revolves around Kyle Kingson (Alex Pettyfer) who is everything you'd love to hate in high school - handsome, rich, popular, a huge jerk and has the whole world at his feet with just a smile. He offends a witch (Mary Kate Olsen) and she decides to teach him a lesson by turning him into a hideous monster with insane facial piercings and bad-ass tattoos that look like the tattoo artist had sneezing fit during a tattoo session. He has a year to reverse the spell and he'll need the help of an unlikely friend, Lindy Taylor (Vanessa Hudgens) to do it.
The pace of the movie was generally rather slow. There wasn't much of a climatic build-up, even for important scenes that should have been pretty exciting. And there were plenty of those. The chemistry between Vanessa Hudgens and Alex Pettyfer is a little questionable, and she seems to slur her words at times.
But they do make an adorable on-screen couple. Extremely pleasant to look at! Yum.
Mary-Kate Olsen as the witch, Kendra Hilferty, was fun to watch. I think it was very convenient that they chose an Olsen twin for the role since her wardrobe for the movie remained pretty much the same as in real life. Except with less crazy hair.
My favourite character of the movie was Kyle's tutor, Will Fratalli, played by everyone's favourite tv bachelor, Neil Patrick Harris! Stole every scene he was in and cracked me up everytime his face came on. I'm beginning to think that Neil really does naturally act like Barney because it felt like I was watching a random episode of "How I Met Your Mother" with his wit and punclines.
Overall, "Beastly" wasn't too bad. It's got enough romance for the hopeless romantics out there and plenty of cute scenes that'll make you swoon. It did rather follow the story of "Beauty and the Beast", but not completely. There wasn't much sense of urgency throughout the movie, but it was fun to watch the relationship between Kyle and Lindy develop.
Plus, you learn things like how beauty is only skin deep and you shouldn't judge a book by it's cover. But I'm sure they don't already need to tell us that ;)
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