The Year of Horrific YA Films

During the in-between of the ending of Harry Potter and the dawn of YA fantasy adaptations, there were a few films that were poorly made as production companies jumped on this trend. While Hunger Games and Twilight were box-office hits among readers, two films in 2011 did not receive the same warm response.

Catherine Hardwicke (Twilight and Daniel Barnz (Cake) adapted Little Red Riding Hood and Beauty & the Beast respectively that same year and honestly, both films were tactless and tasteless - which is a waste of such potential when one has the chance to reimagine these stories for screen. I'll be reviewing these films from a decade ago.

Beastly

A curse transforms a handsome and arrogant young man into everything he detests in this contemporary retelling of Beauty and the Beast. Wealthy Kyle Kingson has everything a teenager could want in life, but he still gets off on humiliating the weaker and less attractive. When Kyle invites his misfit classmate Kendra to an environmental rally at their school, she questions his motivations but reluctantly accepts. Later, Kyle blows Kendra off, prompting the spurned goth girl to cast a dark spell on the swaggering egotist.

My Thoughts: As someone who was raised on the Disney classic Beauty & the Beast (1991), I remember reading the Beastly novel in my teens and being unimpressed and that only intensified to pure dislike when I watched the film back in 2011 - so naturally I’m gonna review it and watch it now.

Beastly follows a superficial and arrogant teenager who is cursed to have tattoos, scars and a bald head because he’s an obnoxious brat – and his beauty is someone who found him attractive when he was horrible.

The script breaks the first rule of screenwriting – show, don’t tell. Every single line of dialogue is exposition, it also falls into the ridiculous cliché of teenagers talking like what middle aged men who wouldn’t ask a young adult to proofread thinks they talk like. Because of this, every character comes across as fake and the interactions unbelievable. I didn’t believe in the relationships or the fledging romance between the two characters.

Moving onto the relationships, this adaptation - both the book and the film - missed what made beauty and the beast such a timeless romance. The love story, two young people falling in love for their inner beauty. Kyle and Lindy are two awkward individuals with extreme daddy issues who fall in love for the basic of reasons. There was no chemistry or building of tension, especially when Lindy found the bully version of Kyle attractive and neither grow or develop from their flaws.

I will say Hudgens was a better casting than Pettyfer, but neither really had a chance with such an abysmal script to work with. However, Mary-Kate Olsen was brilliant as Kendra, Neil Patrick Harrison and LisaGay Hamilton were great additions and Dakota Johnson gave surprising depth to the stereotypes of the popular girl.

Clunky dialogue and weak characters aside, let’s talk the Beast transformation. Again, this shows the superficialities of the production team that they called this version of a Beast the worse punishment. In all actuality, I preferred Kyle as a beast because he looked cooler. Again, a story about inner beauty was written in an incredibly shallow and somewhat patronising way. I’d avoid this at all costs.

This was a ★ rating for me.

Little Red Riding Hood

Valerie is in love with a brooding outsider, Peter, but her parents have arranged for her to marry another man – who is wealthy. Unwilling to lose each other, Valerie and Peter plan to run away together when they learn that Valerie’s older sister has been killed by a werewolf that prowls the dark forest surrounding their village. Hungry for revenge, the people call on famed werewolf hunter, Father Solomon, to help them kill the wolf. But Solomon’s arrival brings unintended consequences as he warns that the wolf, who takes human form by day, could be any one of them.

My Thoughts: To this day, I remember when I first got this film. The main appeal was Catherine Hardwicke directing - who I was a fan of due to the first Twilight film, the teen film fanatic that was slowly developing enjoyed that as a guilty pleasure watch. Still do actually - and from what I gathered, it was a dark fairy-tale retelling. With a strong visual direction and a somewhat decent script, this should be a good watch. Visuals aside, this film suffers from abysmal casting.

Every performance was flat, there was no chemistry between the characters - also I was unsurprised when it turned out the two romantic leads were adamant against working together due to mutual dislike. It showed. In terms of story, it has a good script - it definitely has influences of the YA era of that time. Angst ridden love triangle with the moody bad boy and the bland safe option for the sweet heroine to be conflicted over. However it had a consistent plot and the mythology was actually quite good.

Again back to casting, I strongly disagreed with the choice to cast an almost entirely white cast - most of whom were terrible actors - especially when Hardwicke had to fight to keep the diversity in Twilight, one would’ve thought that she would’ve fought for more representation in this film. Gary Oldman was definitely the best part of the whole film, Amanda Seyfried came a close second and Adrian Holmes was a great addition despite his small role. Everyone else was abysmal, I was even disappointed with Billy Burke who was incredibly flat in this film.

If I read this script blind with this director attached, I would’ve scrapped this entire cast list and started a fresh. This is a prime example of how poor casting choices and flat performances can drag a film down.

This was a ★★ rating for me.

Both of these films could have been good, but they were underwhelming in both performance and writing. When tackling a fairy-tale retelling, screenwriters need to remember it's okay to embrace the origins of the stories, the dark and messy narratives - but above all, write believable romances. I think these films failed because they wanted to jump on a trend rather than tell a compelling story with a strong cast - and the results are as expected.

Beastly and Red Riding Hood are great examples of what not to do when writing a retelling.