Review of Beastly (2011) by Shiira — 11 Mar 2011

Liam Neeson in Sam Raimi's "Darkman", now that's a guy who needed to hide in dark places. A victim of sabotage, a lab explosion rendered Dr. Peyton Westlake completely unrecognizable. The renowned chemist looked as if he had contacted the flesh-eating virus.

The moviegoer understood why he stopped circulating in public, shunning the daylight and only coming out at night. He was, by anybody's standards, beastly. On the other hand, Kyle Kingson(Alex Pettyfer), the uber a*shole who finds himself disfigured when he angers the wrong goth, has facial alterations that are conspicuously artful, highlighted by two proportional red slashes and a squiggly metallic branch running down his forehead.

Since Kyle rules the school, he could probably pull this new look off, but true to his word, the Aryan prepster doesn't take kindly to idiosyncrasies, and exiles himself from a world, he believes, where only beautiful people matter.

Courtesy of his image-obsessed father(Peter Krausse), Kyle takes up residence in a snazzy townhouse, complete with a black maid(Lisa Gay Hamilton) and a blind tutor(Neil Patrick Harris). It's good to be rich.

Conversely, Dr. Westlake lived in an abandoned warehouse. When Kendra(Mary Kate Olsen) puts a spell on her tormentor, the objective is to put this alpha male in his proper place, but far from learning a lesson, Kyle serves his penance in relative luxury.

Although "Beastly" is supposed to be a contemporized take on "Beauty and the Beast"(originally an eighteenth century fairy tale written by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve), a beauty ill-serves the material, because this time around, it's less about the girl seeing the inner beauty of another living being, than the beast who needs to learn that "beauty is only skin deep".

In a sense, and this is the fault of the casting, it does, and that's why "Beastly" doesn't make a lick of sense. Lindy(Vanessa Hudgens) is no Martha Dumptruck, the Westerberg High outcast in Michael Lehman's "Heathers", but she represents the film's idea of an outcast.

Despite always being the prettiest girl in the room, Lindy says things like, "What can I say. I'm substance over style," and "Wow. Looks are really important to you," musings which sound galling from somebody so perfectly chiseled.

This supposed dark horse is supposed to function as a contrast from the girls that the vanity-stricken pretty boy normally dates, and incredibly, that's exactly how "Beastly" utilizes Hudgens, treating her as an underdog in the Molly Ringwald tradition, the plain girl who is unrequitedly in love with the big man on campus.

At a school dance, Lindy. the school treasurer(!), makes sure that each table has its own decorative candle, whereas Sloan(Dakota Johnson), the uber a*shole's girlfriend, basks in her own loveliness, breathing in the rarefied air of Kyle's company, a world where pretty girls rebuff corsages for being the wrong color.

Wanting to be part of that world too, if only for a little while, Lindy convinces Kyle to pose for a picture with her, assuring the elitist snob that she's "worthy" of him. Meanwhile, the newly-elected Green committee president wears a confused look, as if he's baffled by his attraction to such a common girl, a girl of substance.

After the transformation, Kyle spies on her, as she pounds the Manhattan pavement nightly looking for her alcoholic father. When Lindy eventually moves in with him(don't ask, the circumstances surrounding this development is hopelessly contrived), it's supposed to make for a touching love story: two lost and lonely souls, together at last, but the characters these two pin-up quality actors embody are an insult to the lost and lonely.

Here's the better movie. If Kyle ended up with Kendra, like the athlete(Emilio Estevez) who finally sees the inner beauty of the "basket case"(Ally Sheedy) in John Hughes' "The Breakfast Club", with the exception that the witch wouldn't have to compromise(as Allison Reynolds did) and wipe off her dramatic makeup, then maybe you'd have a movie that meant something.

"Beastly" carries with it the message that looks don't matter, but on closer inspection, the film telegraphs something quite the opposite. "Beastly" is as image-conscious as its raging megalomaniac of a hero.