Review: "Beastly" Doesn't Work as Drama or Camp (But it Does Have Neil Patrick Harris!)

Wow, the new trend of Hollywood turning classic fairy tales into feature films has only just started, and I'm already sick of it.

Part of the problem is that the first of this latest wave of "reinterpretations," Beastly based, of course, on Beauty and the Beast, is really bad — not so bad that it's gloriously campy or unintentionally funny. Just completely mediocre in almost every way. (Then again, it's probably not fair to compare Beastly to next week's Red Riding Hood, because the former film was clearly made on the cheap.)

Hot high school student Kyle (Alex Pettyfer, who is having a really bad year given that he had another flop, I Am Number Four, just two weeks ago) thinks that people should be judged solely on the way they look. We know this because, in literally one of the clunkiest scenes I've ever seen on film, he tells the entire class this in his speech for a student body position he's running for (he's also not above flirting with the gay teacher to get a better grade). Only the vaguely unconventional Lindy (High School Musical's Vanessa Hudgens) somehow sees that he has the makings of a nice guy underneath his superficial exterior (based on what, given how he treats her, I'm not sure).

No matter. After Kyle humiliates teen witch Kendra (Mary-Kate Olson, weird and exotic and probably the most interesting thing in the film), she somehow enchants him, not turning him into a "beast" exactly, but a mutilated, tattooed "ugly" guy. You know the story: he has one year to get someone to fall in love with him, despite his looks, or he'll stay that way forever.

Later, in the second clunkiest scene ever put to film, Lindy's father is threatened in a drug deal gone bad, and Kyle, who has been stalking her, agrees to protect her in the cloistered Manhattan hideaway where Kyle's looks-conscious father (Peter Krause, clearly slumming) has hidden him away from the world. Can he somehow make Lindy see beyond the scars and tattoos?

Out actor Neil Patrick Harris gets the film's few laughs in a small role as a live-in blind tutor who doesn't teach Kyle much English, but rather how to live and how to love.

I was struck by two things: first, how little actual story there is here. Nothing is ever really explained, which I suppose I can live with — hey, it's magic, whatev.

But once Kyle is transformed, everyone, including Kyle, accepts that transformation unquestioningly. The first thing I would do if I discovered magic was real would be to, well, investigate the whole existence of magic. The second thing I would do, once it was clear what the exact parameters of my magical curse are, would be to try everything I could to break the spell, starting with paying someone to say the exact words to me, "I love you," and moving on from there. (That girl who crushed on me in the second grade? People totally desperate for love? They'd all be welcome in my home!)

Kyle does none of this. Instead, he sits around moping and whining for at least half of the movie — and later, he stalks Lindy, until he's given the absolute perfect (and absolutely contrived) situation where he can get her in a completely controlled environment, to basically make her fall in love with him.

The movie's ending? Well, let's just say it's the third clunkiest scene ever put to film.

The number one job this movie had — maybe the only thing it really needed to do to be successful — was to make us understand why Lindy might fall in love with this guy: make us see that, for all his jerky bluster, he's really just a sweetie inside, that appearances really don't matter.

I'm sure this kind of thing is a lot harder than it sounds, but it can't be that hard, because other movies do it all the time. But not only did this movie not do this, it's like it didn't even try. Instead, we get a string of "wise blind man" cliches from the admittedly charming Neil Patrick Harris, some moody montages, and Kyle's extremely lame attempts at wooing that I thought usually bordered on outright creepy.

But you know what? Even with all this, I still might not have hated this movie, if only it had embraced its inner campiness. As much as I dislike all things Twilight, I can see that both the books and movies just went for it: they exaggerated everything, went waaaaaay over the top, thereby recreating the way many teens actually experience the world. Not surprisingly, they related.

I've been wrong before, but I'll be shocked if teens find anything to relate to here. On the contrary, I suspect Beastly will be the first true bomb of 2011.

The trailer for Beastly