Beastly

"Beastly" B

With the movie Twilight, it sparked a new phenomenon in movies: a love story, but with a twist. Let's have a movie about a normal woman who falls in love with an abnormal man. After Twilight and the two sequels, it showed the world a vampire love story. Then, there is love stories between an alien and a woman, such as the show on ABC Family "Kyle XY", and the recent action movie that came out in February "I Am Number Four". In this particular love story, it is as if it is based on an old disney classic story "Beauty and the Beast". The movie is appropriately titled "Beastly". I was surprised at this movie. With the long delays that took place (they showed a preview of this movie last summer and was scheduled to be released in July 2010), I was thinking to myself that this movie has been shelved a long time. That is not a good sign. But I actually thought it was a good story with a very good message, that beauty is on the inside too. There are not many well known actors in this movie, with the main cast being Alex Pettyfer as the cocky, shallow popular student council president and Vanessa Hudgens as his love interest (of High School Musical fame). The movie also has appearances from Neal Patrick Harris (How I Met your Mother) giving some comic relief, and Mary-Kate Olsen (one of the Olsen twins, most well known as Michelle Tanner in Full House). She is far from that character in this one as the witch who hexes the student council president with scary looks, which sadly causes his father to disown him. The lesson is he must find someone to truly love him in a year, otherwise he will look "beastly" forever. The message here is clearly defined: don't be shallow, beauty is on the inside. The transformation here is good and it is very realistic. It was a pretty good movie with some interesting nods to poetry and classic love stories. A good rendition of the beauty and the beast story for the Twilight crowd.