The Ever-Growing Pains of "Beastly"
Wednesday, March 15, 2017 at 5:00PM With Disney's live action remake of "Beauty and the Beast" hitting theaters this Friday, here's Jorge Molina to take a look into the yearbook of forgotten movies and another recent Beauty & the Beast adaptation...
I’ve been always fascinated by the mythology, tropes, and interpretations of fairy tales. They are one of our most lasting and frequently sought pieces of folklore. They are the ultimate piece of intellectual property, belonging to the collective consciousness of entire generations. We love to tell them, retell them, repackage them and resell in as many forms as we can conjure up.
I also was once a teenager that wanted to write movies.
Now, let’s imagine that my thirteen-year-old self (with all his growing pains, confused sexual identity, and overflowing longing for deeper meaning) was given the task of reimagining the classic tale of Beauty and the Beast in a modern setting...
That adaptation would probably have revolved around a vain, rich, unrealistically handsome boy being turned into an uglier version of himself, the metaphorical Beast. The superficial interpretation would probably lack any subtlety, introspection, or real substance.
It would keep the quest to find love or otherwise stay-like-that-forever intact (duh) but it would try to be clever by modernizing other elements of the original story (or is it the Disney version...? Who knows? Who cares?).
The isolated castle would now be a mansion across New York. The forced imprisonment of the Beauty would be a wobbly plot about drug witness-protection. And I would have definitely included a pair of whimsical servants to live with the Beast. Let’s say an immigrant maid and a blind tutor.
I would definitely have casted the teen heart throbs of the moment to star in it. Like Vanessa Hudgens, fresh out of her High School Musical success. And up-and-coming, generic blonde hottie Alex Pettyfer in a role that certainly, I would imagine, would make him a star. I would have included then-sitcom sweetheart Neil Patrick Harris "because he’s awesome", and a young Dakota Johnson. And, what the heck, even throw in only one of the Olsen Twins as The Witch.
I would have peppered it with “cool” details all throughout, like a blooming tattoo in the place of the Rose, or the incessant reciting of a modern poem about a Coke in the desert. It would have been full of exchanges of inspirational quotes passing as dialogue, blatant father issues, and shots of angst-ridden teens looking at screens and sulking over their lack of love.
If my teenage self was told to reimagine Beauty and the Beast, it would probably look a lot like Beastly.
But teenagers usually don't make good movies.
Reader Comments (3)
I can't imagine Ebert doing better with this stupid mess.
Note: Though, I'm not one to talk, because in a day and a half...I'm riding the pain train. I'll rip Marvel's (maybe) first bomb off like a band-aid (if it's terrible? Thank goodness it was THIS sphere of Marvel that produced their first mega-bomb, because it makes the film branch look that much safer) and get back to Disgaea and, later, Persona 5, for the PS3.
Jorge -- lloved this. I was so perplexed watching this but you framed it so well. It does seem like a teen scripted /wish fulfillment movie.