Title: Beautiful Creatures
Directed by: Richard Lagravenese
Distributed by: Warner Bros Pictures
Release Date: February 14, 2013
Rated: PG-13
Synopsis: Ethan longs to escape his small Southern town. He meets a mysterious new girl, Lena. Together, they uncover dark secrets about their respective families, their history and their town.(Via IMDB)
Brian: I’m not a fourteen year old girl any longer (oh wait, I was never a girl), but I still like to think I can fall under the spell of a great fantasy movie. I’ve watched the Harry Potter movies over and over, and last year I completed writing a YA trilogy about witches. I love this stuff. But unfortunately Beautiful Creatures didn’t really work for me. I read the book last week, before seeing the movie, and had a good time with it, even though it was a little corny at times and went on probably 150 pages too long. I loved that the book was told from the first person perspective of Ethan, the main boy character, which I don’t see in a lot of YA contemporary fantasy. I was curious how someone was going to adapt the epic novel into a pretty concise 2-hour movie, and I got my answer: poorly. I’ll admit that the viewing experience of this movie was tainted a lot by a family of 8 who sat in the row behind us and kept talking, moaning, breathing hard, and enjoying what seemed to be a five-course meal. But even if I were watching the movie by myself, I don’t think I would’ve taken to this. And it doesn’t really have anything to do with the book; it has to do with how all the elements of the book were translated to the screen.
Shaunta: Once upon a time, I really was a 14-year-old girl. There were sparks in this movie that I think might have ignited with me way back then (in the dark ages of the early 1980s.) Ethan’s refusal to give up on Lena was fairly intense in the way that might have resonated with me. That is, it might have resonated with me if I had been able to get past the hokey accent and goofy Gomer-Pyle grin he had going on. Sadly, between Ethan being sort of jokey and Lena being sort of flat, there just wasn’t enough chemistry to carry this movie the way the central romance needed to carry it. And then they got a Robert Pattinson look-a-like to play Lena’s cousin Larkin, and it was just so weird. Over all, I think that I laughed too much at things that weren’t supposed to be funny. The cast should have been marvelous, but Jeremy Irons was too much like Scar-playing-the-Pope-playing-the-kindly-dark-caster-uncle. And Viola Davis was under utilized.
Brian: What did I like about the movie? The casting for the most part was pretty excellent, aside from the two leads, who are fine but just didn’t have the chemistry, I think, to make a film like this work. Emmy Rossum gives the movie a lot of life, with an excellent performance as Ridley. Emma Thompson is both scary and funny as Mrs. Lincoln, and Jeremy Irons is his typical brooding self. But the biggest flaw of Beautiful Creatures is, no matter how hard the actors and the people behind the scenes try, it all comes across so damn stiff. There’s no sense of wonder in the movie, which isn’t helped by subpar special effects that for the most part look ridiculous (even the glass shattering in an early classroom scene is clearly CGI). There’s also not a lot of forward momentum to the plot, even with so much information getting thrown at us. So many of the actors looked bored, most notably Viola Davis, who sleepwalks through her role. And the ending, which was changed from the book, is almost unintelligible, the way it’s presented and cut together. I think a lot of the fault has to go to the film’s director, Richard Lagravenese, whose only previous directing credits are three mediocre adult dramas. Beautiful Creature needed a more confident visionary at the helm; it’s all just so bland and tepid, with not enough tension, danger, forward drive. Not even Alfonso Cuaron probably could have made a great movie, but there was a chance for something better than this.
Shaunta: I liked the Southern setting. Emma Thompson was pretty hilarious. For some reason, the kid who played Ethan’s best friend stood out to me as doing a good job, and I loved Emmy Rossum as Ridley as well. I didn’t read the book, and I have a feeling that there were parts of this movie that relied on the viewer having also been a reader. The whole ending threw me. I still don’t really know what happened. There was a Street-Car-Named-Desire “Stella!” moment at the end that didn’t make any sense to me at all. Over all, I wanted more from this movie. I wanted to fall in love with Ethan and Lena and to root for them, but the sexual tension left me cold considering that Lena is supposed to be 15 and Ethan was played with an awe-shucks goofiness that didn’t work for me at all. This is one that can wait for Redbox, I think, unless you’re a huge fan of the book and just can’t help yourself.
