It's strange to think that the paranormal romance genre is basically dead at this point. Books, like all things, go through trends and young adult literature is no different from adult literature in this regard. It's unclear what the current young adult lit trend is (maybe diversity?) but before whatever is going on now there were twisted fairy tales, before that there was dystopia literature, and before that there were paranormal romances. Of course, a trend needs an origin and, as most of us can easily remember, for paranormal romance that was "Twilight." The idea of girls loving monsters, but like, hot ones, was all the rage. In fact, since this movie was based on a book that took from both paranormal romance and fairy tales, it's kind of ahead of its time. However, it's timeliness could never have saved it from it's utter lack of things that work about it. While it was marketed aggressively and stared Vanessa Hudgens at the peak of her career, nothing would have made this a hit, but it's a decent bad movie.We are introduced to our "Beastly" protagonist, Kyle, with a working out montage and a way-too-on-the-nose song about being vain. He then gives a class president speech about how people should vote for him because he's good-looking and life be like that. In spite of having no redeeming qualities, he banters with Lindy, the Belle of the movie, at a party and then gets rightfully cursed by a witch (there's just a witch at this school; it's fine) to be ugly forever unless he can get someone to say they love him within the year. His uggo look is . . . well, it would fit in totally fine at a metal concert or in the body mod community. It's mostly a bunch of tree-like tattoos with some nasty looking ghashes, a few metal bits, and eyebrows that look like Arabic script. His image conscious father takes him out of school and isolates him in a mansion with his maid and a blind tutor, and he starts stalking Lindy at night. This results in him saving her from some drug dealers who go after her and her father. After her father kills one of them in the tussle, Kyle blackmails him to let Lindy stay with him for protection. Everything about this is questionable. But, of course, they bond and he gets nicer and they go to his lake house and then she has to go home because dad overdosed. At the last second before she goes on the school trip to Machu Pichu she says "I love you" and we are baffled to see that she is the dumbest person in existance because she really didn't know that Kyle is the same person as the tatted dude she fell in love with in spite of the fact that no one else made this mistake. They go to Machu Pichu together. I guess it doesn't matter that she's completely face blind and he's still mediocre at best as a person.
This movie is a solid watch. It is full of logic lapses, attempts at hip dialogue, telling instead of showing, music that sings the mood to you, and a premise that just doesn't fully work in the real world. The only way it won't deliver is if you are specifically here for monster loving, in which case you should probably watch "WolfCop" instead (except for the love of all things, don't watch "WolfCop"). Hey, it's a post "Shape Of Water" world and we as a society just weren't ready in 2011, I guess.
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