Beastly is what you get when you mix Beauty and the Beast with Twilight. Not only is it a modern day version of the classic fairy tale, Beastly is also a 2007 YA novel by Alex Flinn. Although she wrote several contemporary fairy tales, independent director Daniel Barnz and CBS Films only adapted that one book. Beastly is as bad as it sounds with all the cringy dialogue, awkward storytelling, and angst of The Twilight Saga. Like Twilight, I ended up seeing it as so bad it’s good after awhile. It helps that Beastly is only an hour and 26 minutes. Once upon a time, Kyle Kingson was an appearance obsessed rich kid from New York. Vanessa Hudgens is the beauty and Alex Pettyfer is the beast.
The story is from the beast’s perspective, but Pettyfer feels more like Gaston before the curse. Hudgens is the one with a personality even though Lindy Taylor’s obsession with romance is on the nose. An unrecognizable Dakota Johnson plays Kyle’s mean girlfriend Sloan and Erik Knudsen plays his equally shallow best friend Trey. In her last film role without Ashley, Mary-Kate Olsen plays the freaky goth witch Kendra who curses Kyle for making fun of her. Unlike the fairy tale or the book it’s based on, “the Beast” doesn’t have fur or fangs. Instead they go with a shaved head, piercings, facial scars, and a series of tattoos that would attract your basic emo kid. A white rose is involved, but a magic tattoo tells him how much time he has to find love.
Peter Krause is Kyle’s father who is so fixated on looks, he literally buys an apartment to dump his son in. Kyle spends most of his time brooding, but he is joined by LisaGay Hamilton as his foreign house maid Zola and Neil Patrick Harris as his blind scene stealing tutor Will. Kyle stalks Lindy until he seizes his chance to kidnap her. In this case, he makes a deal with her drug addict father to keep her safe from trouble in his apartment. He uses the name Hunter, hides his deformities, and tries to buy her love. Of course she looks past his appearance and seems to fall in love, but he still finds a way to screw it up. Until an anticlimactic declaration of love mixed with a clunky reveal where Kyle and Lindy live happily ever after. Although it’s best not to take it too seriously, Beastly embraces the suck.
Lindy comforts Hunter
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When this adaptation originally came out, I had high hopes it would be the first good teen film in a long time and bring some nostalgia back for the classics, and now I’m shocked it missed the mark. In a bizarre way though, I could see how this particular version of the curse works for younger people. Vanessa Hudgens has the makings of a big name in acting, and her moments in the trailers and TV Spots show great talent. Kind of a shame this is how Mary Kate Olson said her farewell to acting, but at least she got to go out playing a very different type of character.
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It’s a product of the time. Teen angst was a hot topic and the tattoo theme does make sense in a weird way. Just not in a way that honors the fairy tale.
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