April 24, 2011
I keep hoping to see Alex Pettyfer in a decent movie so that I can admire his tousled blond good looks without having to squirm in embarrassment, but - sadly - this ain't it.
This is not a funky, creative reboot of the traditional fairytale, it is an appalling turkey, marred by a dismal, patronising script, confused editing, performances running the gamut from mediocre to dreadful (from the supporting actors), and hysterically frightful (from the two stars).
The best thing about it was an engagingly camp cameo from Mary-Kate Ashley as the witchy goth who causes the cute-but-mean hero to withdraw himself from society on account of an attack of designer uglies. As you can see from the posters, this means having his hair and eyebrows shaved off, some rather fetching tattoos all over his upper half, and the occasional suppurating pustule on the side of his nose. It does nothing to disguise his fundamentally scrumptious bone structure, eyes, mouth, and figure, so it's a bit of a mystery why winsome classmate Vanessa Hudgens (the object of his affections) fails to recognise him. Equally mysterious is why the laughable caricatures of the Jamaican housemaid and the blind tutor feel any affection for him. But none of these myseries are worth fathoming in the dire, cliche-riddled, implausible and inconsistent fictional world of this movie. So give it a miss, is my advice.
This is not a funky, creative reboot of the traditional fairytale, it is an appalling turkey, marred by a dismal, patronising script, confused editing, performances running the gamut from mediocre to dreadful (from the supporting actors), and hysterically frightful (from the two stars).
The best thing about it was an engagingly camp cameo from Mary-Kate Ashley as the witchy goth who causes the cute-but-mean hero to withdraw himself from society on account of an attack of designer uglies. As you can see from the posters, this means having his hair and eyebrows shaved off, some rather fetching tattoos all over his upper half, and the occasional suppurating pustule on the side of his nose. It does nothing to disguise his fundamentally scrumptious bone structure, eyes, mouth, and figure, so it's a bit of a mystery why winsome classmate Vanessa Hudgens (the object of his affections) fails to recognise him. Equally mysterious is why the laughable caricatures of the Jamaican housemaid and the blind tutor feel any affection for him. But none of these myseries are worth fathoming in the dire, cliche-riddled, implausible and inconsistent fictional world of this movie. So give it a miss, is my advice.