Penelope

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source: Penelope

You remember that ever-so-slightly well-known story called Beauty And The Beast, don't you? You know, the one where a mean-spirited prince is cursed to appear as an ugly beast until he learns to love another and is loved by her in return? In the modern day fable "Penelope", a similar concept is given a gender reversal and a few plot trimmings of its own. The result is a decent little film, engaging enough to be worthy of a look despite its unambitious and fairly predictable narrative. An ancient family curse results in Penelope Wilhern (Christina Ricci) being born with the face of a pig. Her parents Franklin (Richard E.Grant) and Jessica (Catharine O'Hara) are horrified and do everything in their power to hide Penelope away from the world, even faking reports of her death and subsequent cremation. Unscrupulous journalist Lemon (Peter Dinklage) tries to get a photo of the mutant child, but is attacked and blinded in one eye by her furious mother. Many years later, Penelope is a grown-up young woman still living a sheltered life in the confines of her grand house. Her parents believe that the curse can be broken if they find a husband of aristocratic blood for her, but every potential suitor seems to run away in horror upon seeing her disfigured face. The latest would-be suitor, Edward Vanderman (Simon Woods), is no different. Upon being introduced to Penelope he flees in terror and reports the encounter to the disbelieving police. Vanderman's story is ridiculed and he is locked up for the night. Upon getting out he decides to clear his name, and teams up with the eye-patched reporter Lemon to bring shame upon the Wilherns and their grotesque daughter. The dastardly duo hire a broke gambler, Max (James McAvoy), to get close to the girl and get damning photographs of her. But against all odds, Max finds himself falling in love with the pig-faced girl….. The film is pleasant fare, with Ricci holding it together quite well as the titular character. She never appears as disgustingly ugly as the people around her suggest (which makes the moments where men literally dive through windows in the family mansion to escape her attention a bit hard to swallow). However, Ricci makes the character agreeable and gives us genuine reason to empathise with her. The other memorable performance in the film comes from O'Hara as Penelope's insensitive mother, so obsessed with ending the curse that she never gives a moment's thought to her daughter's actual feelings. The rest of the performers do OK, though their characters are generally conventional types. The moral of the story – about finding beauty and happiness from within - is as old as time (even "Dumbo", and some less well-known films that pre-date it, are essentially about the same thing). Nevertheless it's hard not to suppress a smile of satisfaction as Penelope learns to live and be happy with her face, ultimately getting her man and living happily ever after. As simple feel-good fables go, this one is effortlessly watchable in its minor way.

Okay, so I'm looking through Netflix late one night to find something to watch. I see Penelope. By reading the description I thought to myself, "Hey, this sounds like an okay movie." WRONG! This movie is seriously just awful! I was sitting there watching and I constantly kept thinking how shallow every character was! I mean, seriously, if you've seen the movie you know that her nose really isn't that bad! I mean, good grief, so her nose is a little big; so what? My nose is practically as big as her "extremely repulsive" nose. This movie is honestly really awful and it isn't about finding true love, it's about being extremely shallow and only caring what your outside appearance is. I really wish I could erase this movie from my memory banks.

This movie is absolutely not worth watching. Through the entire movie I couldn't help thinking of how stupid the story was. A girl sheltered away from the public by her own mother because her nose was a bit out of shape, and somewhat larger than others. And because of that nose, she had no friends, no education and no experience in life? What..? It was also very tasteless and predictable, and so very unoriginal. This movie should not be seen by anyone to be honest. The story is telling us that you can not live a happy life unless every bit of you is how the society expects you to be. It is sad to see many great actors going to waste. As you all can see, there is lots of high rated reviews but I guess they are all written by teens that do not even use their head when they stumble upon a love story. The writer must have been either really stupid, or have smoked some pot. I do not think she even thought through her story and how the audience would interpret before she made her story public.

This film was a beautiful little film, I was surprised to see it took so long to release considering the stars in it. The actors and story were all up to scratch. Christina Ricci played the pig girl beautifully her eyes just drew you in and James Macavoy was completely gorgeous! I saw a review on here before i watched it saying it was at times a bit soppy ... errr its not its a lovely romance story/fairy tale, also there are many funny bits that tickle your pickle. One thing that did annoying me a tad was why they had so many English actors pretending to be American??!!! There was Nick Frost, someone from Torchwood... then Russell Brand popped up in it momentarily it just confused me quite a lot... anyway this is a really good film and inner beauty and accepting whats on the inside rather than out and all that 8/10

So I went to advanced screening of this movie the other day- I won the tickets through the radio and was so excited since I've wanted you see this movie since July 2007. This movie is amazing- it's like a dark(er) fairytale with humor and wit and moral in all the right places. It's not to fast and it's not to slow; it moves at a perfect pace and it does what not a lot of other movies can. It takes the time to make its characters real- gives them time to show more then one side of themselves. They are wonderfully 3 dimensional instead of flat boring clichés. Christina Ricci (who has been acting for as long as I can remember) is still timelessly beautiful- with or without the nose- and manages to simultaneously break your heart and make you smile. After seeing this move there really isn't anyone else I could picture playing this role. Catherine O'Hara is the funniest, craziest part of this movie. She is perfect in every single way and through it all- all the insane matchmaking and shrieking- you can still find the soul of a mother who only wants her daughter to be happy... and it takes a pretty special actress to be able to pull that off in such a crazy crazy character. Reese Witherspoon smartly decided not to play the main role but more of a sidekick/comic relief role and my god I forgot how funny she could be. She is a breath of fresh air as the first person who really befriends Penelope and she reminds you of your absolutely best girlfriend... or at least the best girlfriend you always wished you had. And of course James McAvoy. Let's start with the obvious; why is this man that good looking? But I'm happy to say that he isn't just a pretty face the boy is wonderful in this movie. You can really see a troubled soul in his portrait and at the same time a guy who know right from wrong. He doesn't go about trying to win her money but he genuinely cares for her and it's there in every single line. A lot of actors could have played this role but there aren't many who would have made this character as believable and soulful as James McAvoy did. As for the two lead- Christina and James- they are magic together. They have incredible chemistry and play off each other flawlessly. SPOILER HERE- The one scene when he sees her for the first time and he stands there looking at her is so real. I watched it and it made me nervous- you could actually feel what she'd be feeling as he stands in front of her without saying anything. It's heartbreaking and it feels like that one moment is dragging on and if there is anyone out there who knows the feeling of standing in front of a room full of people and feeling like you want to die that is the exact same feeling you get from this scene. It was unbelievable- END SPOILER As you've probably guessed I loved this movie- from start to finish- save for the fact that James didn't have his accent which made me a little sad. And I suggest that everyone go see this movie. It's a movie for all ages and I think many a young girl would benefit for the moral behind this story.

"Penelope" opens with Christina Ricci narrating the story to us of how she, Penelope, was born with a curse - a pig nose. The film may seem childish and too fairy tale-like but Ricci speaks with such a soft pleasing manner that she reminds us of the best kindergarten teachers reading to us so we relax and settle in and comfortably enjoy the film. Then we meet Penelope's mother (Catherine O'Hara) she is everything that Penelope is not: high-strung, over-bearing, intolerant. Of course she's just being a protective mother but she's painted in such a light so the audience can relate more and laugh with Penelope. Most of the supporting characters are cliché but they are done over the top so they are actually funny. At this point I should make a caveat, I am a James McAvoy votary. Such that I would be glowing about his role and performance no matter what, so I will be conspicuously quiet on McAvoy to not over-colour this review. Listed as a modern-day fairy tale for the entire family, I actually found the movie much more slanted towards young adults (a few jokes would go over kids' heads). This would probably explain the casting of twenty-something and 30-year-old popular actors. I, for one, am glad that they made a film for me with no violence, vulgarity, action or effects and instead filled it with light-hearted, romantic, feel-good messages about loving yourself. And they somehow did that with out being saccharine or sappy.