Beastly
“Ce qui nous rend la vanite des autres insupportable, c'est qu'elle blesse la notre”. La Rochefoucauld, Maximes.
Beastly is a debased regurgitation of Beauty and the Beast, debased because some director thought the tale is better suited to the moral ambiguities besetting today's impressionable teens. Teens craving instruction on virtue yet too young to be instructed with rated R films, but too mature and cultivated for a musical sung by candles and clocks. The lack of any high school rendition of Beauty and the Beast has left a palpable hole in my life. Had I seen this movie when I was thirteen, I would have later hallucinated some interior beauty in who-knows-what humpbacked skank or misbegotten hussy, only to be rewarded with the stigmata of gonorrhea- truly a testament to a lack of sexual superficiality. Thanks for being two generations too late Beastly. I could have seduced scores of women by convincing them the VD I don't have was the result of acute sensitivity to the plight of the unfortunate. Now I must have a whole new excuse for being clean and superficial that doesn't revolve around your sophisticated moral vision.
Beauty and the Beast done in modern America would make an interesting point about our society, basically that we still live in a world dominated by princes and paupers, a point which Beastly doesn't hesitate not to make. That would upset the conscience of its aristocratic demographic into thinking they are in fact horrible people and watching Beastly will only make them worse. Wait a minute. America doesn't have an aristocracy. Who could be the money-and-beauty consumed people smugly satisfied with appearances Beastly is trying to reach? Hannah Montana sold a CD in 2008 to 371,000 idiots- ask them.
Enough foreplay- let's commence, shall we?
As the opening credits roll, we see our half-naked main character, Kyle Kingson, exercising in front of a mirror Patrick Bateman style. But unlike American Psycho's debauched director, the writer/director of Beastly refuses his main character any whores to sleep with. An opening sex scene might distract us from actually reading the credits and knowing who's responsible for this cinematic masterpiece. So our main character takes upon his sculpted shoulders the task of helping us know who the people are who put hard work in straining out this turd, in no way upstaging the cast and crew by showing how he gets off on himself by himself. I thought this mirror scene might be an allusion to the Narcissus myth, but then realized Ovid is too “lame and 'dated yo” for Beastly's refined fans, who would rather be pandered to by the totally-not-lame-and-dated allusion to nothing at all.
The credits go on while showing several billboards selling sex without selling a product. Beastly apparently couldn't get any corporate sponsors. Seeing as it has Mary Kate Olsen in it, it's rather odd the producers failed to secure at least a plug from Ipecac.
Now the main character is giving a speech for the Green Committee, because he's running to be its president. However, his political charm and personal charisma leave much to be desired, because he takes the crowd on with a rambunctious rant on “ugly”. Mary Kate Olsen, dressed liked she watched the Craft as a propaganda film, takes offense, and leaves after his finale. Kingston ends his impromptu hate spiel with the maxim “Best embrace the suck”, which seems less like sincere advice than a coy reference to his own lifestyle. His mother is nowhere to be found in this movie- or is somewhere to be found no one wants to go, as in the case of Psycho- so I attribute his bad attitude to a lack of breastfeeding he projects on all the ugly, undeserving unfortunates who somehow can be both poor and afford his private school's tuition.
Beastly sure isn't wasting anytime showing us how dickish this guy is. He already has a campaign advisor for the campaign he isn't serious about winning, who flocks around giving Rovesian advice like “Steer clear of the witch.” He's also irrelevant, and only there to let us know Mary Kate is a witch. The director is well aware that it would make us bigoted if we had put this together ourselves, with only the evidence of her black robes, pale make-up and piercings she could have only gotten in a brief fling with Hellraiser. So, to spare us the guilty conscience, he brings in a disposable character, has him say what's on our minds just bitchily enough to hate him for it, and then vanish when we discover she's a good witch. To show how much in-depth research went into this film, I went on Wikipedia for two minutes and discovered that witches, who worship the devil and are an entirely made up boogie man for early Christianity, are actually Wiccans. Wiccans, however, are mostly New Age hippies who spend their time chanting spells that never work.
Mary Kate, a.k.a. Kendra, counters Kingson's platform- whatever it was- by vandalizing his campaign signs. That's a sure-fire way to stamp out hundreds of years of prejudice and hatred against a fantastic cult you are the sole modern representative of, Kendra- ridicule your persecutor with a cartoony Devil's goatee and fluffy eyebrows. She also writes a parody of his catchy slogan: “Don't embrace THIS suck”. Kendra's political philosophy is much more egalitarian, which I'll go ahead and phrase for her as “Embrace the blow.”
Kingson sees this and steers right for her, and they engage in some pathetic attempt at Austenian dialogue, the lines lack of wit being compensated for by their rush to deliver them. I don't think this speed reading would bother a Beastly fan, who is still probably mentally bogged down with the profound implications of “Embrace the suck.” These lines are spoken so rapidly that unless Beastly fans can both A. read, and B. don't mind turning on the subtitles, it might as well be anything.
Then Vanessa Hudgens makes her first appearance. Her and Kingson engage in babble vague enough to insert in any innuendo. The words they emphasize have no ambiguity, so to take their conversation seriously is to be invited into a world who's doubtletalk makes you feel left out of a seriously warped and rare fetish culture. Here's an example I pulled right out of my ass (not from the film): “Hi there perfectly attractive social outcast, would you like to come back to my father's mansion and … wash some dishes?” “Oh sure masochistically popular psychopath, I'll wash your dishes, even though I was saving my detergent for marriage, your stainless steel sink makes me knees weak.”
Once this haggle over something vaguely sexual is over , Kingson yawns a deep sigh from all the hot air and smiles as Hudgens walks away. At home, Kingson attempts to talk to his father, who is sexting someone in a much more interesting movie. Surprised? The narcissistic asshole has a narcissist asshole father? But I'm willing to bet our hero is able to overcome his genetic nature and gruesome nurturing through some generic plot device later. He asks his racially convenient Jamaican maid where her 16 kids are, after the actor who plays Daddy-O goes off to do some soul-searching before committing to the rest of the film. Instead of giving it's characters some real issues to deal with, we get unexplained racism and a family dynamic that would have been Married with Children if Al had been Ted Bundy (and that's not going to be my last reference to him).
The credits are still rolling when Kingson wins the presidency, thus showing a substantial portion of this school is environmentally retarded, either because they elect a candidate who openly says he doesn't give two hoots and a holler about the environment, or because they named the Future Hitlers of America club the Green Committee because it sounded cool. Because trust me, there's no way these kids understand irony. Perhaps his constituency was made up of confused sluts who read an inappropriate metaphor into “ballet box”. But I bet he won because, after the fact was generally known that Beastly was being filmed, hoards of image conscious kids avoided voting like the draft in order to avoid the risk of becoming an involuntary extra.
Kingson tries to bribe Kendra for something, god if I care what, but treats her like the fifth wheel in a gang bang consisting of The Elephant Man and his harem of hos. How serious am I to take MARY KATE OLSEN'S sexual pariah status? This is a woman an entire generation of men- myself smugly excluded- postponed their virginities for in creepy patience waiting for her to come of age. Yet Don Juan here acts as if she has the Black Death of STDS.
The prom is quickly approaching, and the maid has already thrown some salt into Kingson's game he couldn't accomplish himself by calling every girl in the school pock-faced in his speech, by buying him a white rose corsage instead of the orchid he demanded. She tries to explain that roses symbolize loyalty or purity or some other claptrap I don't remember, but Kingson wanted an orchid badly for an inexplicable reason he can't be bothered to articulate.
The next thing you'll see if you don't take my advice and watch this movie is a shot of black men with tribal tattoos playing large drums in rave lights. That's right. This high school thought it was best to eschew the traditional prom themes and go for a zazzy Voodoo shindig. With a main character who's morality would fit right in with any Salem Witch Trial, displaying a band of African-Americans with bone piercings doesn't seem sensitive to the feelings of the world at large. Kingson's date puts her foot down and won't wear the white rose. She's no fool; she knows her reputation for bad acts is so irrefutable that if her classmates see her wearing a symbol synonymous with purity, well, “they're all gonna laugh at you.”
She leaves him on the dance floor, open to engaging once again in some prattle with Hudgens. Not much of this conversation is worth noting, except one tricky thing Kingson says. Replying to some more innuendo, he says “I haven't drank the cool-aid.” Yep. A fucking Jonestown reference. In a film that supposedly has some moral to get across, blithely making an uncalled for reference to a mass murder puts it in dark territory. The suicide of hundreds of men, women and children at the hands of a maniac would fit rather nicely into Beastly's subtext, if Beastly's subtext existed only to point out what an insensitive film it is. If you're wandering why I think it's so bad, here you go: First, it's dated, which makes it a cop out. If the lines sole purpose is to show us what an ass Kingson is, why refer to some event that happened before he was born and not one teen in America will catch? Are they too cowardly to make light of recent events, events they might actually be held accountable for mocking? Second, this remark doesn't seem to bother the movie's moral linchpin, Vanessa Hudgens. Not one bit. While I'm at it, she nor any other woman (except John Proctor's great-granddaughter) seems care that Kingson is a complete sociopath, and at times his antisocial tendencies seem to be the foundation of his popularity. This high school would make a lovely dating pool for Ted Bundy's sperm donations. (told you)
Hudgen's herself has some lines worth mentioning. I think Kingson invited her somewhere, to do something, and she replies “Well, there's that … and that.” Fuck me. Vanessa Hudgens just made a a tautology out of a malapropism. No doubt somewhere in her bottomless intellect the word “that” has enough meanings to make this witty, but to any sane person, “that” means “that” and that's that. Can you imagine Bill Clinton saying something like “I didn't have sexual relations with … that sexual relation.”? The writers of Beastly could.
Kingson gets into a pickle with Kendra- who he's pissy with for the one reason of being pissy anytime he's not enamored with Hudgens. He makes fun of her in a way not even halfway as socially damning as pouring pig's blood all over her, but she's traumatized. She puts a curse on him and says that line the script can't get over it made, “You- embrace the suck”. And “embrace the suck” he does- of the film anyway. At this precise moment Kingson becomes aware he's in Beastly and is overwhelmingly nauseated by the close-ups of Olsen. He stumbles out of the dance, and everyone he sees on his way home bears the deformity he's about to have. No, Kingson- it appears you DID drink the cool-aid.
He gets a personal visit from Kendra, who can apply the powers mentioned in the Salem trial transcripts as if they didn't break every law pf physics. This brings me to a curious question. The Olsen twins have made some bad movies in the past, but this is the only recent appearance I've seen of either of them. Since Beastly must be embarrassing to be associated with, would Ashley Olsen have legal grounds for suing her identical twin? Just a thought.
She touches Kingson and his deformity hits him, said deformity being no more shocking than the budget (or imagination of special effects men) could afford. Kingson is now bald, with pale skin and weird tattoos. I wonder how Billy Corgan and Sinead O'Connor received this movie. Kendra says he's now as attractive on the outside as he is on the inside. That would make sense if it weren't for a pesky fact that throws Beastly's moral logic for a fatal loop. Hudgens was attracted to him before the curse. The only way to explain this, and I had to think for a while, is that Hudgen's harbored some long unrequited crush on Michael Stipe that, through years of frustration, forced her into fantasizing that he disfigured himself to make him a more worthy idol.
Kingson is quite depressed, unaware that his new makeover would make him King of the Litter in the Goth Underworld. The doctors can do nothing, with all their modern medical superstitions, to make Kingson attractive again. What's really interesting here is what his Dad must be thinking. Is this some delayed inheritance his son got from that three dollar hooker he doesn't know is his mother? Like any patron ashamed of his progeny, Dad carts Kingson off to his private condo to be tutored in private. He also sends the maid off, because she's integral to the plot and he wants to get the movie over as fast as he can.
Even the writers must know the movie is getting boring, because now we meet Neil Patrick Harris. He's blind, but that doesn't stop him from gesturing at the peep hole he doesn't know is there when Kingson answers the door. And he's very well-dressed for a blind man- does he hire fashionistas to both keep him aware of modern trends and dress him as well?
Neil Patrick Harris tries to keep Kingson from wallowing around for a good bit of time I won't bother detailing. Kingson's depression hit's rock bottom as the soundtrack tries to convince us this is really sad, until the soundtrack takes a dramatic turn and compels Kingson to bicycle through the city hey-go-mad to illustrate that he's in some bad emotional pain. You know when you're enjoying a quiet meal and some dipshit in a roaring truck screams through, announcing his phallic substitution to the world's annoyance? That's the feeling you get when you watch Kingson daredevil his way through traffic and jumping curbs, although who's breath this is supposed to take is beyond me. He goes to a party where he meets Hudgens again, hiding his face with a hoodie. They make small talk while, once again, the soundtrack tries to convince you something emotional is going on, until Kingson leaves and begins his stalking regimen immediately.
Stalking montages have always bothered me in movies like this. The corpus delicti of these assholes is always the same; watching women through windows, shadowing them around as they go about their day- in Twlight's case even breaking into her bedroom to watch her sleep: but, as long as the soundtrack is sweet and the stalker really loves her, and happens to be handsome and going through a moral rehabilitation phase, it's just fine and dandy. Some movies even throw in a counterpart stalker who does THE VERY SAME THING, only he's EVIL. Sorry, Beastly- stalking is stalking, not knowing its a crime because your character is sentimental and shy doesn't make it any less illegal. Also, Beastly must have paid Hudgens a ton to account for all the creepers it will inspire by vicariously identifying with this behavior.
During one of his stalking excursions, he happens upon Hudgens in a tough spot. A couple chaps are threatening her and her father, and I'll offer my own hypothesis why. Hudgens made a screwball bet with the wrong people that High School Musical would outdo Slumdog Millionaire in Oscars, and the bookie has come to collect his due. Her father manages to shoot one of the bookies, but before anything else can happen Kingson disarms the other with his ugliness and method acting.
Kingson gets Hudgens to move in with him for her protection. You know, these paranormal romance movies get away with a lot of ignoring reality, but this is just ridiculous. Hudgens could have gotten protection from, fuck, the FBI, the local police, shit- even her father could protect her, he did manage to neutralize one of the bookies permanently when all Kingson did was say boo! and scare him away. But Hudgens must be shielded from any character development that would stop feminists from bitching about this movie, and becomes a kept woman repaying Kingson by making donations to his spank bank.
An awkward courtship begins. Kingson, so ashamed of his looks, will only approach Hudgens wearing a balaclava. Nice touch, Casanova. A woman who was almost killed by thugs five minutes ago will find the charm of a bank-robber mask irresistable. He buys her gifts which only piss her off- because they very idea that Hudgens would do anything for money is absurd. He writes her a love letter, because that works so much wonder in the real world, then remembers that since his maid has 16 kids, she might know a lot about romance. The maid and Niel Patrick Harris give him more sappy advice that would only work in the fantasy life of a man who takes his courtship cues from Mr. Rodgers. But it seems to work, and ends with a scene where him and Hudgens alternate reading a poem in a green house he built for her. It's not even an original poem, but she falls for it.
However, Hudgens' father overdoses on a plot device and goes to the hospital, so she leaves to go nurse him back to the obscurity he was pleasantly enjoying. Before she leaves Kingson give her his love letter, then immediately regrets it when she says he's a “good friend.” I think Beastly only threw this line out as a legal safeguard, because any edgy type obsessive guy who might base an insanity plea on seeing this film would have to be dismissed with the claim that “if she says you're a good friend, you should leave her alone.”
Kingson pouts for an extended amount of time, all the while Hudgens is calling because his Byronic letter really got to her, but he won't answer the phone. EVENTUALLY Harris and the maid- the candle and the clock- convince him to see her off before she goes to some third world country to help with some flood/hurricane/something sad. She finally tells Kingston she loves him, which dissolves the spell. Kingson tries to talk to her, but she's only interested in Hunter- the alias Kingson was masquerading as during his courtship. He tells her about the curse, but she's not buying it (fancy that) until she calls Hunter's phone and it rings in Kingson's pocket. Forget the fact that this would creep the shit out of any logical person, it actually enables Hudgens to believe Kingson is telling the truth about his curse, and love him instantly. That she can shift her love from Hunter to Kingson so rapidly is proof of how shallow Hudgens really is. She doesn't care about appearances, true, but shouldn't she associate the personality she claims to love with a face, and love that face as an expression of that personality? If I fell in love with a woman, and then a totally different woman came and told me the woman I loved was really her in disguise, I wouldn't love either of them. Beastly's logic ultimately rests in appearances. Why does Hudgens' character have to be so attractive? Put the curse shoe on the other foot and see how long it stays on.
No alternate explanations occur to her, like: Kingson beat the tobacco juice of Hunter and stole his phone for the express purpose of worming his woman. Or here's another one: Kingson dressed up as a troll in order to fuck with her head, incorporating a bizarre strategy that will eventually give her psychological trauma. It's improbable, sure. But not as improbable as A FUCKING OLSEN TWIN WITCH CAST A SPELL ON ME WITH MAGIC YOU'VE NEVER SEEN ONE EXAMPLE OF YOUR ENTIRE LIFE.
What a load of constipated crap.
“What makes the vanity of other people insupportable is that it wounds our own.”