Mediocre Movie Month 2016: Some Thoughts on "Beastly"

*sigh*

Beastly (2016)

Directed by Daniel Barnz
Produced by Susan Cartsonis, Roz Weisberg, Michael Flynn
Written by Daniel Barnz

Starring Vanessa Hudgens, Alex Pettyfer, Mary-Kate Olsen, Peter Krause, Lisa Gay Hamilton, Neil Patrick Harris

Budget: $17M

I've specifically held off on watching Twilight for these posts. There's a number of reasons for that decision, but the primary ones are that it's a large time commitment to watch the whole series, and I would rather commit to a bit deeper look when (if) I ever do.

However, that doesn't rule out watching the movies who've tried to capitalize on the success of young adult supernatural romance sub-sub-genre. I remember joking about there being romantic versions of zombies, aliens, and mummies, and so far 2/3 of those are real.

Might as well toss Beauty & the Beast on the pile. Nothing's sacred, let's do young-adult Mary Poppins next.

Make Buckeston Academy High School great again.

Originally written in 2007 as a novel of the same title, Beastly tells the story of Pretty Jerkass (Pettyfer) and Love Interest (Hudgens). When Jarkass is cursed by the resident high-school witch (Olsen), he has a year to find true love or be stuck with a bunch of scars and tree tattoos you'd only find outside Portland's hippest coffee shops. From there it follows the story of Beauty & the Beast beat-for-beat while contemporary pop songs tell you how to feel. The production studio is CBS films, which means it looks bland, sounds bland, and feels bland.

We start off in New York High School where every student is an attractive early-twenty-something. There's some sort of student body political campaign going on which requires these huge speeches. Oh, and it turns out it's not for something like Student Body President, it's for...president of the Student Green Committee...hey, maybe this place just takes the environment super-serious.

Chiseled jawline, perfect teeth and six-pack abs don't count.

Anyway, he's a dick to the wrong people and later on Mary-Kate Olsen turns him into the lead singer for a punk-house fusion band. He gets some tree patterns inked on his skin, silver...jewelry(?) on his nose, and what looks like Black Speech tattooed on his eyebrows. It's very unattractive...except that the actor is underneath some prosthesis which really only alter his facial features. He's still young, broad-shouldered, and his bone structure is still what most people would kill for.

He goes about trying to woo Hudgens by stalking her, blackmailing her father into making her move in with him, and generally creeping in order to fake a personality she'll like. The movie ends with a kiss and him transforming back into his beautiful self, which is a relief because ugly people don't deserve love.

Not pictured: a mediocre movie.

It's pretty much another one of those shallow films where there's a big deal made out about the beauty within people all along, which turns out to be nonsense when the badness gets reversed at the end anyway. Along the way it relies on some really heavy contrivances to twist the plot into a B&tB story, in the same way Michael Jordan got twisted into a basketball in Space Jam.

Take, for example, the meet-cute, or the moment where the two leads interact and we see a glimpse of their chemistry. In this movie it takes place at...Beast's victory party at a club? He's won the election for an unimportant position and there's a massive high school party in a packed club with a live DJ and everything, and the two have a little flirtation which ends in a picture. Hudgens pretty much only exists in this movie to be wooed by the main character.

Myspace Non-Copyright Website game on point

Now, I'm obviously not in the demographic for this movie, but I always try to look at these on some objective level. At certain points I actually wondered whether there wasn't supposed to be a more...self-aware version of this, because every so often it feels like they try and move beyond the expected tropes and romance. Welp, it turns out there were reshoots before the movie's release made in order to further emphasize the romantic relationships.

The Beauty
You could count me surprised when I saw Neil Patrick Harris had a moderate role in this as Beast's blind tutor, Will, and you could count me even more surprised that he puts in a fine performance. While I like Harris, he's often wasted when he's not playing himself (whether exaggerated or not). An example would be in A Million Ways to Die in the West where he's mugging for the camera in such a way that it's really easy to confuse with him simply being a bad actor. His performance here is

"Nelson & Murdock, avocados at law."

actually pretty subdued and grounded, and any time we see him the scene is elevated. This is true right up until the end, which felt like it might have been one of his reshoot scenes because he looks like he does not give a damn.

I guess Mary-Kate Olsen looks appropriately witchy, but the henna tattoo on her eyebrow might be a bit much. At least Beast's prosthetics look alright.

The Brutish
So one of the main plot points from B&tB is that Belle goes to live with the Beast and is stuck with him. This being an aping of that fairy tale, we've gotta get Hudgens into the guy's house for an extended period of time. Well, the script's solution is to have her father owe some money to drug dealers, have one of them threaten her, and have Kyle blackmail her father into making her move in with him. The logic is so bonkers that the characters in the movies are openly questioning it and sound just as baffled as I do.

I mean...was there not a better way to manage this? In a genre that's come under increased scrutiny for the weirdness of its romance (Twilight and The Host come to mind [by the same authors, funny that]) and sometimes-abuse-subtext, it's a little strange that they chose this one. Hell, considering the entire movie is Kyle's attempt to make Hudgens love him only due to the witch's spell, it's a weird little metaphor for using women as tools. I'm sure there's some deeper sort of commentary I could make about gender roles and cultural shoe-horning, but this weaksauce movie is not the sort of thing that should prompt that discussion.

The witch gives Harris his eyesight, which he's lacked since he was 15. His only reaction is to stare at his driver's license saying, "Wake up" in a really non-committal tone.

The Unfortunate
Apparently the original ending featured one of the drug dealers hunting Hudgens down and shooting Kyle. As he bled out on her floor she confessed her love to him and he transformed and healed (so Gaston was supposed to be replaced by drug dealers, I guess). Considering the actual movie ends outside the train-station on a really sudden note, this might not have been a good option.

The Verdict
Ha, what? Don't watch this. What's wrong with you?

Hell, what's wrong with me?