SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Anoushka Slater While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Kamila Bell This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Leofwine_draca 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.

phoenix 2 Beastly is a modern look on the classical story beauty and the beast. An arrogant rich boy, Kyle, is cursed by a witch and he is turned into an ugly "monster", a situation that can be permanent unless he can find someone to love him in a year. During that year, Kyle discovers his real self and fells in love with one of his old classmates, Lindy, who stays with him in order to be protected by some gang to whom her father owns money. To be honest, I expected more from it. The season 2011-2012 was a great season for movies based on fairy tales, and even though I finally watched beastly some years after, I still believed it would be interesting. However, from the start, it didn't lived up to the expectations. The story line is pausing at some points, when at some others, the script just rushes forward, getting very confusing and slightly stupid and cheesy. The action scenes are, well, not good enough, and the romance, good, but it could have been better. The ending especially was really bad, when Lindy rushes out of the airport to find Hunter ( the beastly self of Kyle) only to bump into Kyle in his real self. But, there were some good things about beastly, though. Some lines were clever and funny, and the atmosphere was fairytale-like. So 3 out of 10, because I wouldn't watch it again, but the performances were decent and there were some good parts in it. But still the movie seemed like it was put in fast forward.

A_Different_Drummer ... 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.

KenMishima I remember when I first watched this movie. It was two years ago -- I was over at my cousin's house past midnight, since that's where my friends would all gather to hang out often. Said cousin wasn't home, and Friend A was passed out on the couch in another room. So I was in my cousin's room with Friend B, bored, and we decided to look and see what movies were uploaded to the PlayStation 3.Lo' and behold, we came across "Beastly", and said friend told me that he'd seen it several years back and that it was garbage. We have a twisted world-view and thus we have ridiculous senses of humor, so we decided -- at 2 A.M. in the friggin' morning -- to watch this thing called a "film".It didn't take long to realize what type of movie this was. Y'know, the type that the director and writers very obviously intend to be one of those abhorrent disposable "chick flicks", a.k.a. films you go out to watch with your significant other because it's "like, ohmahgawd, so romantic!!" And I knew I was gonna be in for a very terrible experience, and I was not let down at all. So everyone involved in the creation of this movie can pat themselves on the back, because they succeeded two years ago from today in making two innocent men wish they had firearms available for the sole purpose of removing the memories of having watched said film the only way they know how -- forcefully, WITH BULLETS.I won't bother going in-depth with the characters and plot, because if you've seen any of the other 24948912829110389 films of this type, you already know them. In fact, if you even just read the plot summary, you know what happens in the movie.NONE of the characters are likable, except one, and that is a blind man played by none other than Neil Patrick Harris, which is literally the only redeeming quality of this film. Without any hint of hyperbole, he is the only reason this film got higher than a "1/10" from me. You will wish so desperately to beat the snot out of all the characters, because of the mind-numbingly stupid things they do and say.This film is so stupid, I actually think it may have been a sort of satire, taking all the tropes of these types of films and turning them on their heads, except that -- like I already said -- this film is too stupid for that, so I think that's giving the creators too much credit.Not to mention that the premise of the film itself is ridiculously boring and anemic as well. "Watch closely as this unlikable rich stereotypically-handsome jock douchebag transforms into an UGLY unlikable rich stereotypically-handsome douchebag (yes, this dichotomy was intentional), because he is a dick, and wants this girl!" That's literally the whole movie. Just some douchebag who gets cursed for being a douchebag, a very drab and boring one at that, and he has to "redeem himself" by...doing random good deeds, magical good deeds. While simultaneously chasing after a girl who is not as attractive as the film tries to get you to believe, and on top of that, is REALLY annoying as well.Great. No, not really, and you'd do well to stay away from this trash. Even if you're actually INTO these types of brainless teeny-bopper chik-flix, you can do much better.