There are some movies I’m never going to talk the husband
into so if I’m ever going to watch them, it will have to be on my own. The time
in which to take in a movie by myself has dwindled from slim to none and slim
took a bus out of town the second my daughter became an official toddler. But
recently I made time to watch Beautiful Creatures.
Let me start this review by saying that a movie like
Beautiful Creatures is fodder for someone like me. It has all the makings of a
perfect little guilty pleasure. YA adult paranormal fiction? Check. Based on a
beloved book series? Check. Likeable, interesting leads? Check. A great cast of
side characters including a Academy Awards winner Jeremy Irons and all around
bad ass Emma Thompson? Check and Check.
But the sum of its parts didn’t quite add up for me as much
as I hoped it would. And I can’t quite figure out why. I
can’t pinpoint if it was some of the characterization or if it was the story
itself, but the emotional heft wasn’t there, as much as I was hoping it would
be. I don’t think it was the fault of the two leads. I think Alden Ehrenreich was
absolutely perfect as Ethan and I think the character of Ethan was just the
right mix of teenaged ennui and literary hero mash-ups. There were a couple of
times where I caught Alice Englert trying too hard, but she still did a really
passable job in the role and the chemistry between the two was palpable. Is it
wrong that I could watch hours of the two of them making googly eyes and
whispering to each other?
But when the focus moves off of them, the film loses its
momentum. And I’m really not sure who is to blame. Thompson and her over the
top accent? Emmy Rossum and her not even played for laughs Siren routine? Margo
Martindale? (Kidding. I could never blame Margo Martindale for anything.) Thomas Mann? You know what, after Project X I
hold him responsible for damn near everything. Why did Fun Size suck? Thomas
Mann. Why did Craig try to kill himself in It’s Kind of a Funny Story? Thomas
Mann. Global Warming? Thomas Mann. But he was the least of this movie's problems, I think.
I get the sense that the movie may have glazed over big
chunks of exposition/plot from the book just to get where it was going. I’m not
sure what those sections are, and I’m almost willing to break my one rule of
book-to-movie adaptations (the rule is – never read the book after you’ve seen
the movie) just to confirm that there was indeed something significant missing
in translation.
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