Beautiful Creatures(2013 February 14)
Drama | Fantasy | Romance
2 hr 4 min
Rated: PG-13 violence, scary images and some sexual material Read more
Grade: C-
Director: Richard LaGravenese
Writers: Richard LaGravenese (screenplay), Kami Garcia (novel), Margaret Stohl (novel)
Stars: Alice Englert, Viola Davis, Emma Thompson | See full cast and crew
A supernatural love story set in the South which tells the tale of two star-crossed lovers: Ethan Wate, a young man longing to escape his small town, and Lena Duchannes, a mysterious new girl. When Lena arrives in the small town of Gatlin, she quickly captures the attention of Ethan, who only wants to escape what he views as a boring and dead-end town. He quickly gets more than he bargained for, Lena possesses strange powers that have long kept her at a distance from others in her life. Lena and Ethan are drawn together, but their romance is threatened by the dangers presented by Lena's being a Caster and her family's Dark powers. Together, they uncover dark secrets about their respective families, their history and their town. Lena, on her sixteenth birthday, must undergo the 'Claiming', a process that will determine forever her fate: will she be Light or Dark.
Beautiful Creatures...creatures, yes, beautiful, eh...not so much. This supernatural, coming of age, romance, soap opera is far from super and just as far from romantic or even interesting for that matter.
There is so much exposition in this film because without it it would be completely impossible to follow. The script is so laborious that the pace of the film is excruciating, the 2 hour 4 minute run-time felt like 3 1/2 hours, it makes Les Misérables seem like a 60 minute TV prime time drama.
The element that you would expect to be the weak link, the teen romance, is really the strongest link in this very rusty chain. Jeremy Irons, Emma Thompson and Viola Davis are all so bad that you worry about the negative effects this disaster will have on their careers. Where does one start? Viola Davis after her stellar performance in The Help, is reduced to playing a 'wise sage', a woman working two jobs, a house keeper for a white family and a librarian for bigoted white people. The stereotyping of southerners as hateful, religious bigots, intolerant, close-minded ignorant fools is so heavy handed it is barf worthy. Jeremy Irons and Emma Thompson's over acting is so campy, with laughably bad southern accents that it is simply appalling. What a mess and what a waste of talent.
Beautiful Creatures is a romantic fantasy train wreck of a film based upon the The Beautiful Creatures Complete Collection by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl. The film is directed by Richard LaGravenese. It is obvious that Beautiful Creatures is targeted at the Twilight Saga audience, which did not impress me much, but is of classic quality, comparatively.
The special effects are pretty lame considering what is the standard these days...cloudy skies, lightening, winds, a spinning table. Oooh scary. The 'Casters' have really startling powers too, like making teenage boys horny! I mean really, how hard is it to do that. I guarantee that the ending will leave you underwhelmed.
This is really one of those worthy of being passed over. It beats the anti religion drum persistently but I will give it credit for not bowing down to the Hollywood sex and F word culture although there is an abundance of lesser profanities. One would also have expected that they would take the opportunity to go heavily into the racy sex and nudity exploitation since, after all, this is a teen romance story. So, I do commend them for not going trashy.
Behind the scenes with director Richard LaGravenese.
Cast
Ethan Wate Lena Duchannes
Macon Ravenwood Ridley Duchannes Mrs. Lincoln/Saraine
Amma Link
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