Very well executed

To me, this movie is perfection.

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

A truly ugly, mean-spirited teenage romance that seems to have copied the general style of TWILIGHT and is clearly aimed at the same audience, i.e. teenage girls. It's horrible stuff indeed, sort of a modern-day riff on THE UGLY DUCKLING but with some truly repulsive morals behind it.Alex Pettyfer - forever stuck making embarrassingly poor teen films due to his supposed good looks - plays a vain narcissist - hardly a stretch then - who is cursed by a witch into becoming a repulsive beast. Yes, it's BEAUTY AND THE BEAST for modern viewers, caught with an unpleasant twist: if he can get a girl to fall in love with his ugly self within a year, he'll be 'cured'. So the film hardly celebrates ugliness, it's just a torture the hero has to rid himself of while playing up the typical Hollywood idealised image.Needless to say, the acting is very poor, and Vanessa Hudgens is particularly charisma-free as the love interest. Neil Patrick Harris is the best thing in it as the blind tutor, but that's little compensation for what is an appalling viewing experience.

... what sort of movie this would have been with different actors? First and foremost this is the kind of script you don't really see much of anymore, especially in teenage rom-coms. It is as much a stage play as a movie script. Percentage-wise, the number of scenes with the same two characters BY THEMSELVES running lines off each other (Pettyfer and Hudgens) is very high. And therein lies the good news and the bad news. The good news is that Director/Writer Daniel Barnes took risks, the kind of risks you can only take when you are, in point of fact, both the director and writer on the production. He placed all his trust in his actors, and gave them lots of room. The bad news is that it doesn't always work. I am not sure where the fault lies -- since with issues of "chemistry" you need something to compare to -- but if I had to guess, I would point the finger at Hudgens. This film was done at the end the very unusual arc in her career when, as far as teen movies went, she was the "it" girl, she was the girl every high school guy would sell his parents to gypsies for. Whether or not she can deliver this promise is another matter. She is cute, she is sweet, she is vulnerable. But that's fine for love at a distance. Love in tight closeups with tricky dialog is another matter entirely. (If you want to see a quirky Disney rom-com done to sizzling perfection, look at THE CUTTING EDGE, also in my reviews, where the characters completely sell the romance from the first scene, to the delight of the audience). A very ambitious effort which never really hits the target.

An empty, pretentious and rather deceitful 'love' story - all about style over substance while claiming to champion the opposite. My favourite character was the goth girl - at least she had attitude. The lead actor's performance was plastic, artificial, the plot was superficial and dishonest,An earlier review suggested that you might enjoy this film if you're a teenager. I wouldn't personally be quite so ready to insult the intelligence of the odd few teens with whom I'm personally acquainted. I usually try to avoid being so negative, but I found this film really rather annoying.

Well, "Beastly" is definitely a teenage sugar-coated love romance, and would be very well enjoyed if you are a teenager. Of which, I am not. So sitting through this movie was somewhat of a challenge.Why? Well, because it was so predictable, and because it was so sugar-coated that my teeth started to hurt just watching it.That being said, then it wasn't all together a bad movie, far from it. The movie did have its moments, but again, I must emphasize that you have to be a teenager to fully enjoy this movie for what it is.What made the movie semi-interesting for my parts was the take on how the world reacts to people who are not one of the "beautiful people" or one of the popular people. If you are different in any way, society and the majority of the herd-mentality-fed mass will shun you and treat you as an outcast, and the movie did portray this aspect of society in a good enough way. However, personally, I think the movie could have had a heap more moments where Kyle would be out in public with his disfigured face, instead of just being hidden away in that apartment.Furthermore, it was nice to see Neil Patrick Harris make an appearance in the movie, and his characters was adding a lot of interesting flavor to the movie. But more than so, to see Mary-Kate Olsen in the movie was just phenomenal, and especially in that particularly odd character she was playing. These two people actually made it worth to sit through the movie as a non-teenager.Story-wise, then "Beastly" is as plain and predictable as stories go. No surprises here, and you know the ending to the movie right from the very moment even before you put the disc into the DVD player. Everything in the story have been seen before in other stories and movies, so don't expect anything groundbreaking here. As for this being a modern take on the "Beauty and the Beast" story, well, that is debatable. I, personally, didn't see it as such, but more like a teenage spin-off of that particular classic story.Acting-wise, well I wouldn't exactly say that the performances put on in this movie was particularly memorable by any account. It is fairly straight out the generic acting line, without any outstanding star moments."Beastly" is in my opinion a mediocre movie. But I am sure that there is heap of teenage girls and women out there who would disagree with me on that verdict.