Beastly (2011)

  Love may never be ugly, but this movie sure is.  Yikes. 

In this update of Beauty and the Beast, high school senior Kyle (Alex Pettyfer) has it all:  he's rich, popular, and good-looking.  He's also a raging asshole, espousing not even "style over substance" but "style is substance" type of attitude.  But when he runs afoul of teen witch Kendra (Mary-Kate Olsen), he finds his inner ugliness manifested outwardly.  Kendra gives him until the next Spring to find someone who will love him.  Kyle decides it should be scholarship student Lindy (Vanessa Hudgens), and begins stalking her.  Discovering that her father (Roc LaFortune) has killed a man in a drug deal, Kyle pressures him into sending Lindy to Kyle's Long Island mansion to live.  Adopting the name Hunter, Kyle will have to dig deep to find something worthy of her love before the flowers bloom again.

I have to say, I was not expecting this to be quite so adherent to the letter of the story.  I'm pretty sure everyone would have gotten the point of the transformation without that whole "give my teenage daughter as a hostage to some tatted-up weirdo" storyline.  Which made no sense anyway.   

You know what else didn't make any sense?  The "beastly" make-up in no way hides Alex Pettyfer's features.  This is logical from a marketing perspective because you want your pretty-boy star to be instantly recognizable to fans.  But then you're asking those same fans to believe that Lindy, who has gone to the same school with this kid for three years, can't recognize that her mysterious captor "Hunter" has the exact same height, build, eyes, mouth, and voice as the school club president who conveniently "disappeared" senior year?  And don't try to con me with "they ran in different circles".  That motherfucker's face was on every wall of that school.

Neil Patrick Harris is the one bright spot in this otherwise braindead "update".  As the blind tutor, he brings every ounce of charisma he can muster.  I probably shouldn't be so harsh on Hudgens and Pettyfer, since the only other things I've seen them in were Sucker Punch and Magic Mike, respectively.  Neither has been done any favors here, but Hudgens I think has already bounced back.  Pettyfer's IMDb page is looking a little light.  Guess it does take more than just a pretty face.