“Beastly” Review

A few weeks ago, on Saturday night, a few friends and I went to see “Beastly“, a movie we had wanted to see from the first time saw the trailer. The movie was great and pretty close to the book written by Alex Finn. Another great plus was it starred Alex Pettyfer from “I Am Number Four” (which came out earlier in the month) who is really cute.

“Beastly” is a modern version of Beauty and the Beast, which is set in New York City. Kyle Kingson (Pettyfer), thinks he is all that and that ugly people are not meant to exist in a world with beautiful, popular people.

Kyle tells this to the wrong person, Kendra (Mary-Kate Olsen), a witch who vows to turn him as ugly on the outside as he is on the inside. Kyle then has one year to change his behavior and get a girl (who ends up being Lindy) to fall in love with his ugly self, or he will stay as a beast forever.

“To redo The Beauty and the Beast and introduce a movie version of classic literature to a texting addicted, reading challenged generation, at least do it right,” said Gary Wolcott from the Tri-City Herald.

Senior Meghan Houk disagrees. “The movie was adorable. Vanessa Hudgens did great and it was cool to see her in another movie beside High School Musical ones,” said Houk. “I really like how they made Beauty and the Beast a modern day film, it was great!”

This movie was cute. It was just like Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, but based in modern day. Though this version did not have the great Disney songs like “Be Our Guest” and “Beauty and the Beast,” it was still nice. “Beastly” even had the Disney happy ending and Disney star Vanessa Hudgens, who plays Lindy (the Belle in this version).

“It’s really important to stand for what you believe in, and this message is definitely something that’s very strong and close to my heart,” said Hudgens on About.com about playing Lindy. “But I think the main thing always is to develop the character, develop a real person with depth and emotions, and to have it come from a personal place.”

Overall, this short, one hour and thirty-five-minute movie was worth the $6.75 you had to pay to see it at the movie theater. But if you are not willing to pay the price to see the movie, wait until it comes out on DVD and then rent it.