Beastly

Directors: Daniel Barnz
Starring: Alex Pettyfer, Vanessa Hudgens, Mary-Kate Olsen
Time Out rating:

As the beast of Beastly, Alex Pettyfer sports a hairless head, a couple of scars and thick lesions that snake down his face like tattoos. He’s fashionably blemished. Aiming to do for shut-in monsters what Twilight has for bloodsuckers, this teenage, NYC riff on Beauty and the Beast casts Pettyfer as a pretty boy who incurs the wrath of a scorned classmate (Mary-Kate Olsen). Cursed with disfigurement, he’s got a year to convince someone to see past the mask to the heartthrob underneath. Otherwise, the acne is there to stay.

Beastly is a special brand of hogwash: a fairy tale that preaches inner beauty while refusing to obscure the looks of its doomed hero. Once he’s had a sulk, Pettyfer sets his sights on Vanessa Hudgens, a hottie so pure she can see the depths of his alter ego. ‘I’ve seen worse,’ says Hudgens, catching a glimpse of that face. It’s hard to say the same about Beastly.

Beastly opens at Shinjuku Musashinokan on February 4