From the very beginning of the movie, Beastly wants you to “Embrace the Suck.” I’m not even kidding…they repeat that multiple times in the beginning of the movie and that’s your cue to get the hell out of that theater. This might be the worse movie of the year…even worse than Season of the Witch! Which Witch!? There’s a witch in this one too! In a modern take of Beauty and the Beast, Vanessa Hudgens and Alex Pettyfer play to the tween in all of us and make a movie stupider than that blond air-head who recommended you see this movie. Beastly was all kinds of awful…from the script to the absence of acting to the directing and even film quality…could they not afford HD cameras? My friend put it best when saying that this was like a high school film project that was rushed overnight because it was due the next day. It was that bad.
Where to begin? I think the standout winner for crappiest part of the movie has got to go to the dialogue. It’s craptastic…even the girls who awww-ed at every scene thought it was garbage. There’s no excuse for a script to be this bad…how did this even get greenlighted? We are blessed with such phrases as “Bitchcraft” and “Frankenskank”…it’s like modern day Shakespeare. There are certain scenes where the whole audience collectively laughs at how obscenely poor the lines are. Basically any time a character opens their mouths, you need to close your ears. Brain cells will be lost.
Mary-Kate Olsen plays a witch...a witch.
Let’s back it up and get some context in here. Kyle is a good-looking egotistic asshole who has everything he ever wants at his fingertips except the loving attention of parents (awwww). For some reason there’s a witch at his high school and nobody seems to care. This was a modern interpretation, right? What the hell is a witch doing in there? Mary-Kate Olsen plays a witch…not a kid acting like a witch or a distraught goth who found a book of spells…a full fledged witch with a weird eye tattoo thing like Mike Tyson. That’s normal. Anyway, she curses him because he invited her to the dance just to embarrass her in front of everyone (I guess witches have high school drama too). Now he’s ugly. Seriously. Stay away from this movie.
Beauty and the...Beauty?
If you haven’t seen Beauty and the Beast, something’s wrong with you…go watch it now. But for the .0001% of you who don’t know the story, the Beast must now find the true love of a Beauty to un-uglyfy himself. I never understood that part, why couldn’t the beast just fall in love with another beast? Ugly people can’t be ugly? What are we teaching our kids? Apparently Vanessa Hudgens is supposed to be the girl next door and not the hot girl in the in crowd. But come on, it’s Vanessa Hudgens! She’s a cutie and she plays the role of a cutie very well. I’d tattoo Ugly on my back for her…no witch needed.
The only saving grace of this movie is Neil Patrick Harris (or NPH as I like to call him). He’s nothing short of amazing and cracks witty quips throughout his on screen appearances. If you’re wondering why I even went to see this movie, he’s why. He plays Kyle’s tutor who doesn’t really teach him anything. Zola is his housekeeper/nanny who actually teaches him how to think but I hated her. I’m Jamaican and I *hate* when movie people put fake Jamaicans or people trying to pull a fake Jamaican accent in movies. This has got to be the worse I’ve ever heard. Zola was like an Irish Jamaican switching between and merging two very distinct accents. It was painful to watch and it really had no reason in being in the movie.
I've seen worse
The whole soundtrack is emo. Is emo in now? Is that what all the kids are listening to these days? My screening was full of middle school and high school tween girls who were enthralled with the movie that they’ll probably forget by the time they update their Facebook statuses. And yes, there are status updates and texting in the movie…but form a decade ago. It was like Friendster-level, not even Myspace. Expect to hear plenty of “awwwwwws” and “oooohmygooods” or even “ooooheeemgeeees” from the girls sitting to the left and right of you. The movie is full of plot holes and countless scenes that are just awkward and don’t make sense. In the beginning, you’ll be amazed at how awful the script is, in the middle, you’ll laugh at how bad the acting is, and by the end it’ll be too late…you’re now dumberer. awwwwww.
Tags: Alex Pettyfer, Beastly, Neil Patrick Harris, Vanessa Hudgens
Matthew Fong created advancescreenings.com and is the lead contributor. He watches every type of movie and will try almost anything twice. You can follow him on twitter here: @matthewfong
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