Beastly

BEASTLY lives up to its name: It's inert, unexciting, and sometimes laughable, and not in an intentional way. When the best part of your movie is a supporting actor who appears to be channeling his most popular character from a sitcom -- in this case, Neil Patrick Harris as Will, who seems like a blind version of How I Met Your Mother’s Barney -- you know you’re in trouble.

Start with the movie's definition of ugly, for instance. Rather than make pretty boy Pettyfer downright hideous (which is called for in this case), Beastly wimps out and goes for a tattooed, slashed, punk-rock skinhead look, with a dose of allergy-induced-looking inflammation here and there. Then there’s the tone, which is ambivalent at best. Is Beastly a supernatural mystery, a high school drama, or a romcom? (Our money is on supernatural mystery, which it abandons fairly quickly.) And what about chemistry? Pettyfer and Hudgens have none. Some storylines, like Kyle’s dynamic with his father (Peter Krause), seem promising, and the film’s look isn’t half-bad (it has a brooding, midnight-in-the-city vibe). And Harris is always a win, whatever role he plays. But honestly, Beastly is pretty blah.