Mary-Kate Olsen Makes a GAP Model Suffer for his Genetics and Upbringing

To conserve money I'm renting instead of going to the movies. This means a lot of these reviews may mean nothing to you since you are more likely to have already seen the movies I'm talking about. One of these movies is Beastly starring Alex Pettyfer, Vanessa Hudgens, and Neil Patrick Harris. You know the drill: summary then critique. Here it goes.

• This is a modern take on the "Beauty and the Beast" fairytale, so if you've watched the Disney movie then you can probably guess how it goes. A spoiled rich brat who believes looks are everything is cursed to look completely disfigured until they can get someone to fall in love with them. There's also a time constraint, and both stories involve flower and book themes. In the end everyone lives happily ever after.

Unlike the animated version of this story, Beastly has a wonderfully small cast. This allows you to get to see the characters develop more slowly while still keeping the time short. Unfortunately this makes the audience suffer through Hudgens's (High School Musical, Suckerpunch) obnoxiously monotonous and somewhat uncomfortable performance for more time. However, this also gives us more time to enjoy the performances of Neil Patrick Harris (How I Met Your Mother, Harold & Kumar) and Alex Pettyfer (I am Number Four). Pettyfer plays Kyle/Hunter, this movie's beast. I'm still undecided as whether or not I like him as an actor. He has an interesting manner, but since I've only seen him in two films that could be because of his costars. (Check here for my analysis of I am Number Four if you'd like more info on his acting abilities.) In this film he looks good in comparison to Hudgens and Harris helps to bring his acting to a higher level. I have little faith in models turned actors, and Mr. Pettyfer just so happens to be a prior GAP and Burberry model. Being able to see him not be pretty is nice because he has to work a little harder to sell the story. At times you can tell he's reciting lines, but there's hope for this young padawan. Let's just hope he doesn't go to the dark side. He has four films in production so I guess I'll figure out if I like him or not soon enough.

Neil Patrick Harris is, as always, snarky and entertaining. He's a great actor on his sitcom and, while he is pretty lighthearted in this movie even though he's playing a blind guy, he gets to be more dramatic and much drier than he normally is. He also plays well off of the Mrs. Potts character portrayed by Lisa Gay Hamilton. This makes him a combination of Lumiere and Codsworth, which is just and funny as it sounds. Mary-Kate Olsen also makes an interesting witch, playing the extreme goth chick who happens to have supernatural powers. Because every high school chick goes to these sorts of extremes to teach classmates lessons.

This movie is cotton candy; there's not much there but they fluff it up to make it seem like more. The make up artists are easily the biggest stars having created a great "beast." Other than that it's a feel-good movie that's worth the dollar rental, but is neither worth buying or watching multiple times. And if you're not into romantic movies (not chick flicks necessarily) you may not enjoy this movie at all. 

3 stars out of 5