Melina Fleury

Staff Reporter

The movie Beastly is a cute, modern version of Disney’s 1991 classic, Beauty and the Beast. It is directed at the teenage audience, considering it’s rated PG-13. Released on Mar. 4, the movie stars, former Disney actresses, Vanessa Hudgens and Mary-Kate Olsen, and also British heart-throb Alex Pettyfer, who was also featured in I Am Number Four.
Beastly tells the story of a rich, popular and extremely handsome high school boy, Kyle Kingson, played by Pettyfer. Kingson publicly said that, “beautiful people get it better,” and ended up insulting classmate – and secret witch – Kendra (Olsen), who casts a spell to make him ugly and scary. Giving him a year to find true love, Kingson ends up living in Brooklyn to hide from people. With his house keeper and his blind tutor, his dad ‘forgets’ about him.
Living in that different reality, Kyle ends up seeing his old classmate, Lindy (Hudgens), and saves her drug-addicted dad’s life. Lindy goes to live with him so he can protect her, but she doesn’t know ‘Hunter’ – his new invented name – was actually the popular Kyle Kingson.
The CBS movie was written and directed by Daniel Barnz and is based on the book by same name, written by Alex Flinn. The 86-minute Hollywood version, however, fantasizes and has many differences from the story in the book and from the original Beauty and the Beast plot.
In the book, Kingson has two years to find true love, and he’s actually ugly and furry. In the movie, he’s still strong and handsome – if you look beyond his bald head and body filled with weird tattoos. So, the first thing Lindy says when she sees the beast is that she has “seen worse.”
Hollywood could have worked harder on Pettyfer’s ugliness, but the movie was still pretty good. The modern version was clearly made to please the eyes and the minds of those watching. Belle’s – or Lindy’s – dad is not imprisoned by the terrible mean beast, he’s actually saved by it. And the beast is nothing more than selfish and arrogant.
Kingson has a tattoo of a tree with growing flowers, relating to the red rose in the original Disney version. The movie is slightly predictable, but that can be forgiven by the fact that everyone knows the original plot.
The modern version could take place no where else but in New York City, instead of in a small French city.
Probably the most disappointing part of the movie is that it contains some hollywood romantic cliches, such as the popular selfish guy changing and turning into the perfect one and falling for a nerdy girl he had known for years but had never noticed before.Also, even though Beastly tries to convey the message that beauty comes from within, the teen stars in the movie are all pretty attractive and properly free of imperfections.
Hudgens doesn’t impress with her acting, but the movie impressed with it’s good editing, soundtrack and even plot. The story goes by really fast and catches the public’s attention in a good way, getting people to feel the emotions going on in the movie. That’s all it takes for Beastly to be a three out of five stars.