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By Amanda Brown / Staff Writer
By Amanda Brown / Staff Writer
Beastly” is a classic story of love overcoming looks spun into a modern romance.
The main characters include Lindy (Vanessa Hudgens) and Kyle (Alex Pettyfer), pretty much the beauty and the beast.
The movie begins with everything vain, the opening scene is Kyle half naked working out and then the scene pans out to show the audience the industrialized world outside of his window.
This displays how focused every billboard in the city is on the way people look or should look.
It clearly shows how focused American society is on the outer beauty and how inner beauty has been eaten alive in such a fierce new world.
The way Kyle and Lindy meet is through an election for a go green campaign. During the election Kyle states that the only reason people will vote for him as president is because he is attractive and then following that bold statement he blatantly states that he does not even care for the cause.
Lindy on the other hand, is focused on the situation and yet only runs for treasurer.
The “magic” that ties this movie together comes from Kendra (Mary-Kate Olsen) a teen Goth queen and witch, she is an obvious outcast because of how she looks but she cares about the inner beauty of people.
As the outcast, Kendra is not drawn to Kyle like he wants, she is actually openly against him.
Big surprise in teen stereotypes, Kyle being the arrogant teen decides to play a prank on the outcast and therefore is turned into the beast.
Kendra tells him that he must make a girl love him for who he is on the inside in a year to reverse the spell, with that she gives him a tattoo to know when his time is running out.
The tattoo symbolizes how crazed youth is with this art form and it creatively showed the time period Kyle had left to break the spell.
Continuing with the predictable storyline Kyle shows his father what he has become and does not get the loving response he hopes for.
His father, played by Peter Krause, whom Kyle has learned his views from, basically moves him away so that he does not have to deal with him.
Comparable to the candle stick and Mrs. Potts in “Beauty and the Beast,” Kyle also has two sidekicks.
Kyle’s father hires blind tutor Will, played by Neil Patrick Harris, to teach Kyle while he is out of school and sends Kyle’s maid Zola (Lisa Gay Hamilton) to take care of him.
Zola and Will are the only people who have daily interaction with Kyle and their approach to adversity begins to rub off on him.
Being truly beautiful inside, the two of them help Kyle to become the man that a woman could fall in love with.
In an amazing coincidence Lindy must live with Kyle, well her father is a drug addict and he gave her to Kyle for protection.
Like that would happen on a daily basis?
Well it did here, as Kyle has been previously stalking young Lindy and he witnesses her father get into some trouble with drug dealers, he then blackmails the father into giving him Lindy.
To win her over he first gives her expensive things like a purse and jewelry, she denies them but then accepts the candy he gives to her. From this point he woos her and she falls for him.
After some time he takes her to his lake house creating the perfect setting for her to release his curse.
In the midst of their time together her father overdoses and Lindy must go to his rescue. Before leaving she tells Kyle what a great friend he is. He gets discouraged but decides to chase her, the spell is broken, and they both live happily ever after.
The passion Hudgens and her co star Pettyfer were supposed to share was not there in the least.
Despite the lack of better acting, the movie was alright but not as good as one would hope for and is definitely not worth wasting the money it costs to see it in the theater.
