Posts tagged review
Movie review ‘Elektra Luxx’: A whim that almost turned into a movie
Mar 10th
“Elektra Luxx” isn’t really a movie, but a collection of characters seeking a story. Some of the characters are appealing, some of the acting is highly skilled, sometimes there’s a funny line or two, but it never adds up to anything; you sense that the characters, as much as we, are waiting for something to happen.
The title character (played, with silky self-assurance by Carla Gugino) is a porn star who, upon finding she’s pregnant, has left the business and is seeking a more conventional life. In walking through Elektra’s day, we also meet a young, earnest sex blogger (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, funny and light), a porn starlet (Adrianne Palicki) in love with her oblivious friend (Emmanuelle Chriqui), a flight attendant (Marley Shelton) with a link to Elektra’s past, an elegant older woman with a secret (Kathleen Quinlan), and others, including an uncredited Julianne Moore whose presence is so unexpected that I spent half her scene thinking, “Wow, that actress really looks like Julianne Moore.” Some of this is diverting — I liked the starlet’s malapropisms, such as calling a businessman an “adventure capitalist” — but Sebastian Gutierrez’s screenplay wanders, never bringing us close enough to care.
Gutierrez, who also directed and edited the film (on a very low budget that too often shows), made the film alongside his 2009 “Women in Trouble,” and the films share a number of characters. In the press kit, he casually explains that “Elektra Luxx” was created pretty much on the spur of the moment, because he and the cast were having so much fun making the first film and didn’t want the experience to end. Unfortunately, that’s the problem, and it shows: He wanted to make a movie, but he didn’t have a movie to make.
Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725 or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com
From seattletimes.nwsource.com
Movie review: ‘Mars Needs Moms’ needs a little help from earthly beings
Mar 10th
After seeing “Mars Need Moms,” children may need a therapist.
The movie takes place on Mars where females dominate, ruled by a ruthless despot, while males have been relegated to a subterranean trash heap. Martian babies, meanwhile, emerge out of the ground like sea turtles and get mothered by nanny-bots. To supply the machines with maternal skills such as discipline, the Martians abduct mothers from Earth, extract these skills and then vaporize the women. Happy times.
No, this isn’t a horror film. Well, at least not intentionally. This is an animated Disney film. At least the studio continues its decades-long practice of traumatizing children by eradicating mothers. Care to watch “Bambi,” son?
Fear not, though, the film actually comes with a pro-mom message. As such, if your charges don’t mind watching a mother get obliterated, they may come away from the movie with a better appreciation of mater familias.
By the way, the human element gets amplified here as “Mars Needs Moms” gets the motion capture treatment where “live” actors act out the scenes and computers render their images into lifelike forms. Examples include “Polar Express” and “Disney’s A Christmas Carol.” The closing credits of “Mars Needs Moms” show how it’s done by Robert Zemeckis’ company ImageMovers Digital. Disney, which bought the company in 2007, has since closed it reportedly to cut costs. Zemeckis intends to resurrect the studio.
Anyway, the film, based on the picture book by Berkeley Breathed of “Bloom County” fame, opens with the Martians looking for an appropriate mom to abduct. They watch one mother acquiesce to her bratty kid. She’s rejected. They then watch a mom tell her son to take out the trash. He reluctantly agrees to do so. This mom (voice of Joan Cusack) is judged to be a keeper.
Her son, Milo (motion by Seth Green, voice by Seth Dusky), clearly objects to being bossed around. He thinks his life would be better without a mom and tells her so. He realizes later how hurtful his comments were, but before he can apologize, mom gets abducted. Isn’t that just the way it is?
Milo manages to get on aboard the spaceship taking his mother to Mars where he’s quickly captured and just as quickly escapes, thanks to the high-tech wizardry of Gribble (voice of Dan Fogler), a motor-mouthed man-child who claims to have arrived on Mars as a “secretnaut” during the Cold War against communism. Mars is the Red Planet, he points out. One expects that joke might get lost on the young crowd.
Gribble comes with a Disney staple: a cute animal sidekick. Here, it’s a robotic animal who pukes nuts and bolts. Adorable.
When Gribble tells Milo the fate that awaits his mother, the boy sets out to rescue her. Gribble deems the mission impossible, especially when the opposition is led by The Supervisor (Mindy Sperling), a snarling, wrinkly faced control freak who barks out orders with a raspy voice that sounds as if it carved out by razor blades.
Milo and Gribble receive assistance from Ki (voice of Elisabeth Harnois), a Martian who learned English from watching hippy-dippy television shows from the 1960s. She acts like a flower child, painting the Martian buildings in brilliant colors, and speaking like a Woodstock transplant. For a little romance, she develops a crush on Gribble. You may wonder why. I blame drugs. Don’t worry, folks, Ki doesn’t get stoned. She’s just high on life.
The remainder of the movie shows the trio trying to rescue Milo’s mom with plenty of action scenes to keep the hyperactive crowd pleased. Milo also learns how much he needs his…video games. No, his mom.
As an emotional wimp who becomes teary-eyed at “Aliens,” I did get a little verklempt at the end. And while I appreciate the film’s message, I have difficulty getting excited by its execution. First of all, it’s unnecessarily shot in 3-D. The technology adds absolutely nothing to this film so the viewing audience is once again paying extra and getting zilch in return. How long will it take for audiences to realize they’re getting ripped off? One can only pray not long. In the meantime, Hollywood keeps churning out 3-D movies, following the P.T. Barnum mantra that there’s a sucker born every minute.
“Mars Needs Moms” could have replaced the 3-D nonsense with a sharper script that added a little more humor to the proceedings. To try to appeal to the potty joke crowd, the film contains an unnecessary diaper-changing scene where The Supervisor, as punishment for her crimes against humanity, gets urinated on by a baby. Pathetic.
Cusack fans should note that her screen time is limited to a few minutes. How much you enjoy the film may depend on how much you can tolerate John Candy-clone Fogler.
The movie was directed and co-written by Simon Wells, whose credits include films that merit “acceptable” rather than “must-see” status. Case in point, “Prince of Egypt.” Another case, this film. Competent yet far from classic.
What “Mars Needs Moms” ultimately proves is that when it wants to make a great movie these days, Disney needs Pixar.
“Mars Needs Moms” is rated PG for sci-fi action and peril. Running time: 88 minutes.
“Mars Needs Moms”
Grade: C+
From www.gateschilipost.com
Movie review: ‘Mars Needs Moms’ needs a little help from earthly beings
Mar 10th
After seeing “Mars Need Moms,” children may need a therapist.
The movie takes place on Mars where females dominate, ruled by a ruthless despot, while males have been relegated to a subterranean trash heap. Martian babies, meanwhile, emerge out of the ground like sea turtles and get mothered by nanny-bots. To supply the machines with maternal skills such as discipline, the Martians abduct mothers from Earth, extract these skills and then vaporize the women. Happy times.
No, this isn’t a horror film. Well, at least not intentionally. This is an animated Disney film. At least the studio continues its decades-long practice of traumatizing children by eradicating mothers. Care to watch “Bambi,” son?
Fear not, though, the film actually comes with a pro-mom message. As such, if your charges don’t mind watching a mother get obliterated, they may come away from the movie with a better appreciation of mater familias.
By the way, the human element gets amplified here as “Mars Needs Moms” gets the motion capture treatment where “live” actors act out the scenes and computers render their images into lifelike forms. Examples include “Polar Express” and “Disney’s A Christmas Carol.” The closing credits of “Mars Needs Moms” show how it’s done by Robert Zemeckis’ company ImageMovers Digital. Disney, which bought the company in 2007, has since closed it reportedly to cut costs. Zemeckis intends to resurrect the studio.
Anyway, the film, based on the picture book by Berkeley Breathed of “Bloom County” fame, opens with the Martians looking for an appropriate mom to abduct. They watch one mother acquiesce to her bratty kid. She’s rejected. They then watch a mom tell her son to take out the trash. He reluctantly agrees to do so. This mom (voice of Joan Cusack) is judged to be a keeper.
Her son, Milo (motion by Seth Green, voice by Seth Dusky), clearly objects to being bossed around. He thinks his life would be better without a mom and tells her so. He realizes later how hurtful his comments were, but before he can apologize, mom gets abducted. Isn’t that just the way it is?
Milo manages to get on aboard the spaceship taking his mother to Mars where he’s quickly captured and just as quickly escapes, thanks to the high-tech wizardry of Gribble (voice of Dan Fogler), a motor-mouthed man-child who claims to have arrived on Mars as a “secretnaut” during the Cold War against communism. Mars is the Red Planet, he points out. One expects that joke might get lost on the young crowd.
Gribble comes with a Disney staple: a cute animal sidekick. Here, it’s a robotic animal who pukes nuts and bolts. Adorable.
When Gribble tells Milo the fate that awaits his mother, the boy sets out to rescue her. Gribble deems the mission impossible, especially when the opposition is led by The Supervisor (Mindy Sperling), a snarling, wrinkly faced control freak who barks out orders with a raspy voice that sounds as if it carved out by razor blades.
Milo and Gribble receive assistance from Ki (voice of Elisabeth Harnois), a Martian who learned English from watching hippy-dippy television shows from the 1960s. She acts like a flower child, painting the Martian buildings in brilliant colors, and speaking like a Woodstock transplant. For a little romance, she develops a crush on Gribble. You may wonder why. I blame drugs. Don’t worry, folks, Ki doesn’t get stoned. She’s just high on life.
The remainder of the movie shows the trio trying to rescue Milo’s mom with plenty of action scenes to keep the hyperactive crowd pleased. Milo also learns how much he needs his…video games. No, his mom.
As an emotional wimp who becomes teary-eyed at “Aliens,” I did get a little verklempt at the end. And while I appreciate the film’s message, I have difficulty getting excited by its execution. First of all, it’s unnecessarily shot in 3-D. The technology adds absolutely nothing to this film so the viewing audience is once again paying extra and getting zilch in return. How long will it take for audiences to realize they’re getting ripped off? One can only pray not long. In the meantime, Hollywood keeps churning out 3-D movies, following the P.T. Barnum mantra that there’s a sucker born every minute.
“Mars Needs Moms” could have replaced the 3-D nonsense with a sharper script that added a little more humor to the proceedings. To try to appeal to the potty joke crowd, the film contains an unnecessary diaper-changing scene where The Supervisor, as punishment for her crimes against humanity, gets urinated on by a baby. Pathetic.
Cusack fans should note that her screen time is limited to a few minutes. How much you enjoy the film may depend on how much you can tolerate John Candy-clone Fogler.
The movie was directed and co-written by Simon Wells, whose credits include films that merit “acceptable” rather than “must-see” status. Case in point, “Prince of Egypt.” Another case, this film. Competent yet far from classic.
What “Mars Needs Moms” ultimately proves is that when it wants to make a great movie these days, Disney needs Pixar.
“Mars Needs Moms” is rated PG for sci-fi action and peril. Running time: 88 minutes.
“Mars Needs Moms”
Grade: C+
From www.milforddailynews.com
Movie review: “Red Riding Hood”
Mar 10th
Once upon a time there was a movie director who made a couple of well-received independent films and finally landed a blockbuster.
Our heroine is Catherine Hardwicke, whose credits included “Thirteen” and “Lords of Dogtown” before she kicked off the “Twilight” franchise, directing the first film in the series. She was gone by the second one, but not before creating a signature look and, um, feel for the films. If, by chance, you’ve missed “Twilight” and its sequels, don’t worry. Shiny, moody, moon-faced and dumb, “Red Riding Hood” pretty much replicates the experience entirely.
This is not a good thing.
Young girl falls for one boy but is pursued by another, all set against a silly supernatural backdrop. Substitute a woodsman for the vampire love interest and a blacksmith for the werewolf rival and you’re up to speed. Oh, there’s a werewolf here, too, but we’re getting ahead of the story.
Valerie (Amanda Seyfried) lives in the village of Daggerhorn, where all her life she has pined for Peter (Shiloh Fernandez), who grows up to be a woodcutter.
Valerie’s family has arranged an engagement to blacksmith Henry (Max Irons), who seems like a nice fellow, but just doesn’t excite her the way Peter does.
It’s your typical small-village love triangle, really, except for the werewolf who has been hanging around for a couple of generations. He shows up every full moon to kill the sacrifice the townspeople offer, usually a pig or something. But one night the werewolf kills Valerie’s sister and the townspeople panic. A search party hunts down and kills a wolf — yay, or so they think — just before the arrival of Father Solomon (Gary Oldman).
You haven’t killed the werewolf, he explains, because he doesn’t live in the woods. He walks among you. Of course Solomon is proved right, and from there it’s a matter of figuring out who the werewolf is, and yes, we get the “what big eyes you have” bit.
“Red Riding Hood” looks good, the snowy village and forest appropriately menacing. And there is a sort of unintentional campy fun to be had in places. Just don’t go in expecting much, in other words, and perhaps you’ll live happily ever after.
From www.news-leader.com
NY1 Movie Review: “Battle: Los Angeles”
Mar 10th
The new sci-fi action film “Battle: Los Angeles,” starring actor Aaron Eckhart, opens in theaters this week. NY1′s Neil Rosen filed the following review.
Alien invasion movies are nothing new. In fact, many of our planets most notable cities have been blown up in one film or another. The latest target is LA in something called “Battle: Los Angeles.”
Now you know going into something like this that it’s not going to be “The King’s Speech” and it’s no intellectual exercise. What we’re looking at here is how realistic are the special effects and how much fun are we going to have watching the destruction of well-known landmarks. Maybe, if we’re lucky, the characters and storyline might even be entertaining.
But I’m sorry to report that “Battle: Los Angeles” fails on every one of those levels.
Aaron Eckhart, who by the way I have no idea what he’s doing in a movie of this type, plays a marine platoon staff sergeant.
The producers waste no time. The very first minute of the movie, the alien attack is on. In its close to two hour running time, except for about 10 minutes, it’s an onslaught of nonstop explosions and gunfire — almost guaranteed to give you a headache.
There’s no attempt at any character development, so you really don’t care who lives or dies.
As far as the dialogue goes, it’s so pathetic that at the screening I attended the audience was laughing out loud. Unfortunately, those lines were not intended to be funny.
As for special effects, they’re not very good, except for one little sequence that only constitutes about 30 seconds of the movie. The rest of the time, a bombed out LA is indistinguishable from Baghdad.
The movie shamelessly borrows from dozens of other films like “Armageddon,” “2012,” “Independence Day” and “Black Hawk Down.” But unlike those movies, there’s nothing of merit here.
Visually bland, unconvincing CGI, an inane script, wooden, one note, cartoonish characters and too much boom, boom, boom; bang, bang, bang. So overall, there’s no enjoyment to be had in “Battle: Los Angeles.”
Neil Rosen’s Big Apple Rating: 1/2 Apple
From statenisland.ny1.com
“Red Riding Hood” Movie Review: Like “Twilight,” but Worse
Mar 9th
In a wintry woodland in an unspecified time long, long ago, teen beauty Valerie (Amanda Seyfried) is arranged to marry brooding, hunky, rich dude Henry (Max Irons), but is plotting to run away with brooding, hunky peasant Peter (Shiloh Fernandez). Then — bummer! — Valerie’s sister is eaten by the werewolf that besieges their village, thus forcing our heroine to weigh her own budding libidinal desires against supernatural forces beyond her control.
Sound familiar? Directed by Twilight franchise launcher Catherine Hardwicke and shot on clunky-looking sets embellished with garish digital effects, Red Riding Hood is a cheap attempt to cash in on that vampire series’ massive success. 
RRH, like the Twilight movies, is geared to the just-pubescent demographic: Hardwicke lovingly shoots a medieval bacchanal as if it were a movie prom, while Valerie’s encounters with the CGI wolf are cartoonish when they should be chilling. Where the Twilight films play the material dead straight, RRH veers between monotonous, soapy seriousness (the bickering of the boy rivals, various impassioned confessions) and camp (Julie Christie’s growling Grandmother, Gary Oldman’s bombastic professional wolf hunter—who rides into town towing a giant iron elephant).
Give credit where credit is due, I guess: RRH’s sequel-baiting ending breaks new ground in endorsing mortal danger as a teenage aphrodisiac.
From www.browardpalmbeach.com
Beastly – movie review
Mar 8th
Beastly – movie review
Beastly is a modern take on Beauty & the Beast, taking place in New York during modern times. The story follows a vain boy named Kyle who believes looks are everything, and that without looking good that makes you a nobody. This ticks off a witch who places a curse on him in order for him to learn that it is on the inside that matters the most. However, only does falling in love with someone will break his curse. He is given a year to find someone to fall in love with him, which he knows who he wants to love to him.
I love the story, which I think is another example of a great movie that does not need to throw in anything extra. In a lot of ways, I feel like it can be compared to Twilight in a lot of ways. However, Beastly is its own movie, and deserves its own review based on merits. Much like the original Disney classic, the story is a sweet love story that proves people can change if needed. The key that this story teaches is that the person has to want to change. Nothing else can change them, which perhaps helps shape this movie into a believable story. I am still in awe over the movie, which most films do not have that kind of affect on me. I think that this story will stay in the forefront of people’s minds for a long time to come. I want to throw also in that this movie was based upon a book in the same name, but surprisingly it did not come off as a silly movie edition. It felt much more organic so to speak.
Now, on to the characters I will say that I am a fan of all of them. They each brought something new to the story, even help keep it funny at times. Nobody dragged it down, they each had a clear reason on why they were involved in the story. Of course, the star crossed friends are the two leading roles for a reason. It pretty much is their story from the start, but it also had a few co-stars that helped give the story some shape. Of course, my favorite characters were Lindy & Kyle because they were what made the story. Without them, there would have not been a story to tell in the movie.
The plot was well thought, which I was surprised about. I was worried that it comes out as a bad knock off of the original story, which it is far from the case. While the movie does not have a twist, it does give an example of how love stories used to be. It took off right from the first scene, and did not slow down at all. The pace was just right without causing you to wonder what on earth has just happened?! It is the perfect blend of chick flick, family flick, drama, humor, and romance. Best of all it was not crude in any way, just a simple film that was written, and acted in good taste.
Set wise, I think they did a great job. The homes were very real looking and even the school looked like a school for rich kids. Besides that, the make up they gave Kyle was an amazing job. It looks so real, I had almost a hard time believing that it was just fake. His team did an excellent job at making him really look as if that was how he naturally looked. It most likely took hours of work to get him to look that way. The movie should win an award just based on his make up team alone.
Idea age group was an easy choice to make. It is perfect for older kids, or families if the young kids know that it is fiction. It would be ideal for slumber parties, girls night out, by yourself, or for family night. It can really reach out to a large amount of age groups, which makes it a great option for so many. If they only made more movies like Beastly, I think that the movie business would do even better than time.
To wrap this review up, I will say that I think this has been the best film that I have seen thus far this year. It has a quality, and substance to it that made it a stand out from the rest. For my classic 1 out of 10, I give it a 10. It is a type of movie that you can watch again, yet never be bored with despite that you watched it more than once. This will be a movie that I will buy on DVD, once it is released for retail store sales.
From www.bsckids.com
Movie Review: Women Without Men
Mar 7th
FESTIVAL FILM
Women Without Men (M) *** 1/2 stars
Shabnam Tolouei, Pegah Ferydoni, Arita Shahrzad
Directed by Shirin Neshat
You’ll like this if you liked Persepolis, The White Ribbon, Pan’s Labyrinth
The debut feature of New York-based Iranian photographer, visual artist and director Shirin Neshat is an intensely visual, dreamlike and somewhat elliptical film about four women whose troubled lives intersect in unusual ways.
Based on Shahrnush Parsipur’s novel of the same name, it is set in Tehran (though filmed in Casablanca) against the backdrop of the British and US-based 1953 coup that brought down the democratically elected government of Iranian leader Mohammed Mossadeq after his attempts to nationalise Iran’s oil supplies, and reinstalled the exiled Shah.
There are references to the political unrest throughout the film but audiences will find Neshat’s quite strange art-house offering, which apparently began as a video installation, more accessible if they’re versed in the bare bones of Iranian politics of the era.
Mostly, though, the framing political upheaval is only glimpsed at through a visually striking, often surreal narrative that’s more concerned with the sadness of four women across very different social strata who are all repressed in some way by the society in which they live.
There are bursts of magical realism as the film meanders between story-lines, which may mystify audiences expecting the clear-cut narrative and more easily laid-out politics of other Iranian movies – like Marjane Satrapi’s similarly themed and also highly stylised animated feature Persepolis, which was set later around the Islamic Revolution of the late 1970s.
Neshat’s dreamlike sequences are always intriguing to look at but often bafflingly oblique. Indeed, the film begins with a suicide and a bizarre resurrection.
Munis (Shabnam Tolouei) throws herself from a rooftop in a wonderfully composed slow-motion sequence. Then via flashback she is shown listening intently to political reporting on the radio, to her brother Assad’s (Bijan Daneshmand) intense displeasure – a relationship that drives her suicide.
Later, after Assad has buried her lifeless body in the family’s garden, Munis’ voice calls out from underground to her more tradition-abiding friend Faezeh (Pegah Ferydoni), who is attending Assad’s wedding while secretly wishing she were the bride. Faezeh digs up Munis, who is, in a mystical flourish, remarkably recovered.
Two other stories intertwine with Munis and Faezeh’s. An alarmingly malnourished prostitute named Zarin (Orsi Toth) escapes the brothel where she works, and at the other end of the social spectrum, an unhappy middle-aged woman Fakhri (Arita Shahrzad) leaves her army husband and buys an orchard in the country outside Tehran.
Somehow, Faezeh and Zarin both find themselves at Fakhri’s idyllic place of escape.
Neshat struggles to cohere the story-lines and – despite its beautifully colour unsaturated visual splendour – it’s an impressionistic and faintly dissatisfying experience by the end.
Nevertheless, as another emigre-made entry into Iran’s impressive catalogue of films protesting the repression of women and the smothering of any freedom of expression in that country, it continues to have relevance.
It’s a film that couldn’t have been made in Iran without landing Neshat in jail alongside the currently incarcerated filmmaker Jafar Panahi. And at its heart, it is the asphyxiation of cultural freedom in Iran that she is lamenting.
Women Without Men screens at Joondalup Pines until March 13.
From au.news.yahoo.com
Rango Movie Review – Watch Johnny Depp’s New Film
Mar 6th
Rango Movie Review – Watch Johnny Depp’s New Film
Rango is a chameleon who always dreamed of becoming a hero like in the movies. When he wakes up in the position to save a town from the wild west he realizes that he can prove everyone that he is really brave.(Rango’s voice is assured by Johnny Depp)
In Rango cliches and stereotypes are mixed togheter and are added colorful dialogues.By the multitude of characters is trying to portray the fierce bandit type, the corrupt mayor, the gunmen scary, big-eyed and naive child , but with smart lines, tough women, which added more “specific” realities of their furry, winged or crawling. Outrageousness surpasses the typology in order not to stay in the mind with some chameleons that are not distinguishable from each other through specific behavior.
Dirt city seems a character itself. Artist’s vision “Crash” McCreery brought something new into the look of classic western town.From distance, Dirt city looks like a typical western city, but when you get closer you see that everything is made from sticks of candy bars, cans of petrol, old tires, bottles.
Depp had a chance to tell a little about the character which gives life in animated film Rango.
Johnny Depp – an ordinary chamelon
The collaboration between Johnny Depp and Gore Verbinski started with the films in the series “Pirates of the Caribbean”. When he was asked if are any similarity between Captain Sparrow and Rango, Johnny Depp said that he has always had an affinity for lizards.
Depp added that when he played the role of “Jack Sparrow” in the movies “Pirates of the Caribbean and he had to run, that run was inspired from a scene that he saw it live with a lizard that ran on the water.Since than every time when Captain Jack had to ran in the scene he thought and felt like a lizard.Johnny Depp thinks that Gore had in mind that ran of the lizard, which helped to create this character.
Rango project is made up by the producer John B. Carls (Open Season), Graham King (The Departed), Verbinski as director and screenwriter, with James Ward Byrkit (who was a concept consultant to the series Pirates of the Caribbean) and John Logan (writter of dramatic films such as Gladiator, The Last Samurai, The Aviator, Sweeney Todd, and future Coriolanus, Hugo Cabret and the next James Bond). Mark “Crash” McCreery, the genius creator of special visual effects, creatures responsible for the series “Pirates of the Caribbean” but also of Jurassic Park and Terminator 2,joined later the team.
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From www.dailygossip.org
Beastly Movie Review: True To It’s Name
Mar 5th
Beastly is a modern-day retelling of the classic Beauty and the Beast. Sadly, if you are looking for a live-action remake similar to the beautiful Disney version, you will not find it.
Hints of the classic tale peek through this troubled retelling, but overall the film lacks any true romance or chemistry and seems to misunderstand the story behind Beauty and the Beast. The acting is terrible and the modern-day plot doesn’t make sense in terms of the events that unfold. Director Daniel Barnz has put together a sloppy retelling that had huge potential to succeed – it just didn’t.
The Plot:
Set in high school, Beastly follows the story of Kyle Kingson (Alex Pettyfer), a beautiful high school student who only cares about looks and ridicules anyone who does not meet his standard of beauty. His bullying makes him the target of school misfit (and witch) Kendra (Mary-Kate Olsen), who casts a spell on him when he invites her to a dance, only to make fun of her in front of the whole school. She transforms his good looks into a mirage of deformities and he has one year to find someone to fall in love with him or his deformities will remain forever.
Enter Lindy (Vanessa Hudgens), a sweet scholarship student who saw past Kyle’s looks even when he was good looking. Kyle has changed his name to Hunter and persuades Lindy’s drug-addicted father that she will be safer if she stays with him. Lindy lives with Kyle/Hunter and the two form a close bond which gives Kyle/Hunter a chance at getting back to normal.
The Good:
Neil Patrick Harris plays Kyle/Hunter’s tutor – a blind man, who can’t see the deformities and gets to know the Kyle behind the looks. He has some clever lines to deliver and he does it well. He is the only part of the film that even allows for the crack of a smile. Generally, he plays his witty and charming character from How I Met Your Mother, only less obsessed with sex and girls, but it works for the film and he represents the only good thing.
The Bad:
The film doesn’t make sense in its present day setting. If you are going to do a modern-day retelling of a classic story, you have to account for modern day events. For example, Lindy is sent to live with Kyle, going by the name Hunter, to protect her from her father’s drug problem. Lindy is locked away from the rest of the world, which is accurate and true to the original tale, but doesn’t make sense and appears out of place in this modern re-telling.
Pettyfer’s sub par performance is distracting and it kills any form of credibility in the film. He seems completely uncomfortable playing someone ugly. With all his makeup and deformities, he doesn’t seem to know what he is doing and presents a sulky, immature teenager. It’s as if his physical deformities spread into his personality and made him a tortured actor trying too hard.
The chemistry between Pettyfer and Hudgens is barely there. Hudgen’s has some awful lines to deliver, as does all the cast, but she can’t seem to disguise the cheesy lines with her acting ability and they come out completely forced and unnatural.
Beastly is a film marketed to and made for teenage girls. The story is competent enough and makes enough sense to get by and most teenage girls will love it. In terms of a great film, it does not even come close.
From www.reelmovienews.com
