Review: Beastly

Beastly follows spoilt and arrogant teenager, Kyle Kingson (Of course, they’re always called Kyle!) (played by Brit actor Alex Pettyfer), who is cursed by one of the Olsen twins, this leads to him becoming all ugly-fugly and being told he has to find someone who loves him for who he is, and all that crap. Add in Vanessa Hudgens and then you got yourself a movie!

The film has numerous problems, firstly the acting. Pettyfer’s character starts of unlikeable and we’re meant to see a change of attitude, but I personally never saw much change in the character (I’d pin this on a poor script and weak acting from Pettyfer). He starts of rude, at the end he still speaks to his ‘servants’ like they’re dirt. Hudgen’s is equally as wooden, as another totally unrelatable character void of all personality. The role I did actually enjoy seeing was Mary Kate Olsen who plays ‘the witch’ Kendra (Witches, aren’t called Kendra, Playboy bunnies are called Kenra!)- her scenes although not great, I soon realised were the high point of the film. The two characters fall in love extremely quickly, simply after reading a poem together, they’re practically dry humping in the zoo. 

Add in all the elements of any other teen film – high school election, Halloween party, the popular kids; bucketloads of cliched dialogue which anyone who has seen a few chick flicks can predict 5 minutes prior to actually being spoken, and a dodgy message at the end – there you have the mess that is Beastly. It can have 0.5 for Scary-Kate Olsen, 0.5 for Lisa Gay Hamilton and 0.5 for Neil Patrick Harris – none of whom I particularly enjoy watching, but in a film this weak they become the highlights.