Beastly (12A) **

Apr 24 2011 by Roz Laws, Sunday Mercury

BEASTLY (12A)

HHIII

CAST: Alex Pettyfer, Vanessa Hudgens, Mary-Kate Olsen, Peter Krause, Neil Patrick Harris

PLOT: In a modern retelling of Beauty and the Beast, New York city high school student Kyle (Pettyfer) is great-looking but not a very nice lad, possibly because he’s neglected by his father Krause. Aaah. After publicly humiliating a witch (of course they exist!) called Kendra (Olsen), she curses him and turns him into a scarred, tattooed freak, “as aggressively ugly on the outside as the inside”. Except he’s really not completely hideous, his shaven head is actually quite artistic. Kendra tells him he has a year to find someone to say ‘I love you’, which will release him from the spell, so he sets about wooing impossibly nice Lindy (Hudgens).What are the chances he can stop being a jerk?

GOOD POINTS: I liked his sarcastic blind tutor (Harris). And it’s only 86 minutes long.

BAD POINTS: The trite dialogue is awful and it’s horribly cheesy in places.

SHOULD I SEE IT? Beastly isn’t ghastly, but it’s not good either. Watch it if you want to see pretty boy Brit Pettyfer with his top off.