Beastly

Beastly is a modern retelling of the Beauty and the Beast story set in Manhattan. Kyle Kingson is a wealthy, popular high school student who cares above all about appearances and treats those around him with contempt. When he humiliates Kendra, a classmate rumoured to be a witch, she curses him, turning his outer appearance into a reflection of his inner self. Stripped of his looks, Kyle has one year to find someone who will love him as he is, or the transformation becomes permanent. His hopes rest on Lindy, a girl he comes to know after his change.

The film was directed by Daniel Barnz, who also wrote the screenplay, and was his first feature in the director's chair, followed later by Cake. Alex Pettyfer plays Kyle, with Vanessa Hudgens as Lindy, Mary-Kate Olsen as Kendra and Neil Patrick Harris among the supporting cast, which numbers twenty-one credited performers. It was produced by Susan Cartsonis for CBS Films and Storefront Films on a budget of seventeen million dollars, and it took about forty-three million dollars worldwide.

Audience response has been modest and divided: on IMDb it holds 5.5 out of ten from roughly eighty-two thousand votes, while on TMDB it sits at 6.3 from a much smaller base of nearly two thousand nine hundred ratings. A film critics' score of 3.6 out of ten from ninety-six reviews places it well below even the warmer of those two audience figures.