Review of Beastly (2011) by Jake C — 15 Sep 2018

Another HDTGM dumpster fire of progressively dumbfounding choices, from the witlessly caustic dialogue to the feckless makeup and costuming aesthetic-for which reasons one should forgive the actors for looking and sounding so dumb-to the forgettably chichi needle drops.

To make matters worse, though, is how disingenuous the movie ultimately is, its ostensible message being a familiar, naive lesson in humility, inner beauty, and and selflessness, while it nonetheless structurally replicates (even intensifies) its hero's toxic narcissism.

His is essentially the only narrative arc to follow, the other characters fading away at precisely the moment when they should overshadow him, the female and non-sexually competitive characters existing only for his pleasure-in many ways, this is the opposite of what makes the Disney cartoon, which focuses on Belle and which stars the furniture as much as it does the titular Beast, so much more compelling.