A FRIENDLY SUGGESTION to makers of stupid tween movies: You’d be better served not titling your piece-of-crap fairytale an unflattering adjective. It just makes headline writing too easy. A shock to no one, Beastly—a reimagining of Beauty and the Beast—is a sugary pabulum of ludicrous dreck, and I’d be angry at its complete lack of anything resembling intelligence if it weren’t so forgettable. It’s like it got wiped clean from my mind not 10 minutes after the end credits. Thank you, coping mechanism!
Desperately accessing memories of inane plot: Conventionally attractive douchebag Kyle (Alex Pettyfer) is running for president of his high school’s prestigious green committee (?!), giving speeches about the merits of being pretty and telling ugly people to “embrace the suck” of their hideous lives. What a beast! Yet personality-less good girl Lindy (Vanessa Hudgens) improbably likes him. She is the beauty! Kendra (Mary-Kate Olsen), the high school witch (?!?!)—who looks like Stevie Nicks threw up on Lady Gaga—hexes Kyle for his grievous crimes against the unattractive. Kyle is transformed into a “hideous” monster, which means now he has weird face tattoos, silver puffy-paint scars, and the words “embrace” and “suck” as eyebrows (?!?!?!). He has a year to make someone love him or he’s stuck like this forever. So he moves to an isolated Brooklyn townhouse with his talking teapot and candelabra—er, his Jamaican housekeeper (Lisa Gay Hamilton) and his blind tutor (Neil Patrick Harris, singularly funny and handsome). Then Kyle kidnaps Lindy, wooing her with Jujyfruits and poems about Coke.
You know, I actually liked it better when I didn’t remember anything about Beastly. It’s probably much better for your mental health if you just skip the repression process to leave Beastly festering in its own stupidity, alone and unwatched and unloved.