The Year of Magical Thinking

The new high school-set take on the Beauty and the Beast story, Beastly, opens with up-and-comer Alex Pettyfer showing off his toned, hot bod, which is photographed to rival the majesticness of Manhattan’s Chrysler Building.

It is, by far, the most fantastical shot in the movie.

This Vanessa Hudgens-Pettyfer vehicle has the good fortune of being first on trend (yay, getting delayed from last summer paid off!), but the bad luck of being completely...unexciting. Hollywood has turned to the world of fairy tales once again for inspiration (projects for both the big and small screens are a-comin’) – and I can only trust its offerings will be superior to this one. Your move, Red Riding Hood.

Anyway, Pettyfer plays the beautiful and rich but full-of-himself-and-mean-about-it most popular guy in school, Kyle, a guy who gets off on mocking and humiliating those he deems “aggressively unattractive.” Granted, it’s not his fault that he’s such a tool: his superficial TV anchor-father (Peter Krause, from TV’s Parenthood) has raised him to value looks rather than what lies beneath. This is what passes for gravitas in Beastly.

His relentless taunting meets its match, though, when he crosses someone he shouldn’t have, his Goth-y classmate Kendra (Mary-Kate Olsen, rocking some dangerous-looking heels like nobody’s beeswax), whom he invites to the school’s environmental dance only to blow her off in public.

Kendra’s not the kind of girl to get her feeling hurt so easily...in fact, she’s a powerful witch, so she does what she would, which is to put a hex on Kyle to make him as aggressively unattractive on the outside as he is on the inside, transforming him into everything he despises.

Bald, scarred, and tattooed to within and inch of his life (but still tight), Kyle has one year to find someone who will love him as he is, which will be hard since he’s been such a d-bag and all.

It is the only way to break the curse, though (one of the niftiest tricks of his newfound ink is it tells time – a tree on his arm marks the passing of the season).

His task is made all that much more complicated after his father banishes to Brooklyn with a sympathetic housekeeper (Lisa Gay Hamilton) and blind tutor (a game Neil Patrick Harris – he and Olsen were the best part of this one, trust). Y’ know...so he can be more comfortable away from glaring eyes. As he first resists and resents his new mission in life, Kyle soon begins to see the world, and himself, a little differently, especially after he re-meets an old non-friend from school, Lindy (Hudgens).

A scholarship girl from the wrong side of the city who dreams of nothing more than to go on a trip to Machu Picchu (a trip for which she’s been saving for like, forever), Lindy is the kind beauty who will save terrible self, of course, but first, this beast has to get her in his castle, which he does when he chances upon her drug addict-dad killing a threatening dealer in defense of his princess.

Seizing the opportunity, Kyle promises the addict freedom and safety for his daughter, and sets out to woo her, not only because he wants her to fall for him so the spell goes poof but because he genuinely likes her.

The fact that Beastly was set against a high school background made it seem smarter than it actually is, because to cater to today’s youth you gotta be the sharpest knife out there, but, ultimately, it proved to be as dull as most of its acting (Alex Pettyfer and even you, Vanessa Hudgens, I will give you a pass with the hope that you knew this could only turn out to be a wooden snoozefest) and its execution.

Happily ever after this did not make, so don’t bother.

My Rating *1/2

Photo: mmm-mag.com.