Beastly

Never before has a film had such an apt title. Kyle (Alex Pettyfer) is a rich, popular, good looking, arrogant cock hole who is running for some sort of Environmental Office thing at school. After constantly insulting fellow classmate and secret witch Kendra (Mary-Kate Olsen) she puts a spell on him which makes him ugly. He has one year to make someone fall in love with him or he will stay ugly for life. Forced to live alone in a huge house which his father buys for him, he has only a maid (Lisa Gay Hamilton) and private tutor (Neil Patrick Harris) for company until he falls for ex classmate Lindy (Vanessa Hudgens) and moves her into his house. Will she fall in love with him within the year, despite his disfigured face? Will he learn that there is more to life than looks?

Of course he fucking will. This film pissed me off. For starters Kyle is such a dick that before his redemption I’d built up such a hatred for his character that I didn’t care if or when he made amends for his earlier attitude and comments. Another problem is that the whole plot hangs on the fact that Kyle repeatedly calls Mary-Kate Olsen ugly. I would love to live in a world in which Mary-Kate Olsen is considered one of the ugliest members of society. Even if you aren’t a big fan of her looks, you’d be hard pressed to call her ugly. A further problem is that everyone just accepts that Olsen is a witch. If someone put a spell on me then I’d go to the police or the newspapers or something but it’s just like “Oh no, a witch put a spell on me, dang!” Surely the big story here should be that THERE ARE WITCHES!

You know you're struggling when the best
thing about your film is Mary-Kate Olsen's acting

The next half an hour is spent with Kyle moping around his mansion being ugly and doing pull ups. Despite his new looks, he really doesn’t have it that bad. Sure his dad doesn’t like him, but he didn’t like him when he was good looking. He has a maid, a private tutor, a huge free house, a limo, a beach house, a motorcycle and then gets a fit bird to live with him. How he gets Lindy to live with him is by stalking her for a while and then blackmailing her drug addict, murderer of a father. Awww how sweet. Once Lindy is in the house with Kyle she pretty much forgets about her father until the final few scenes. SPOILER ALERT After a while, and after the two kids get to know each other it turns out that Lindy liked Kyle when he was an arrogant, handsome dick anyway! She has a picture of him as her screensaver! So after meeting him twice as an attractive dick, she liked him enough to have him on her screensaver but it took about 6 months for her to like him when he was nice but ugly. She doesn’t sound like the sort of person I’d want to be with!

The soundtrack is pathetic. I’m not going to say anymore about it. It’s just manipulative tosh. If you’re still not convinced about how bad this movie is then let me tell you that it was nominated for two teen choice awards, an award ceremony in which Adam Sandler, Brooklyn Decker and Justin Timberlake won acting awards. This is 86 minutes of moaning teenagers who don’t know how good they actually have it. Nothing makes sense and the performances are rubbish. The best thing about the film is that it is less than 90 minutes long. Unfortunately that is 90 minutes too long.    

1/10