The best part of this benighted version of Beauty and the Beast is the filigreed network of slashes, tattoos, and metalwork that class witch Kendra (Mary-Kate Olsen as Gary Oldman in Dracula) inflicts on high-school pretty boy Kyle (Alex Pettyfer). Far from turning him ugly, the affliction makes him look exotic, twisted, fascinating, malignantly sexy - everything that the rest of this movie is not. Kendra is punishing Kyle because he's mean and all he thinks about is himself - traits, it's suggested, that he's inherited from his dad, who locks him away in an apartment when he becomes unpresentable. While there, he has time to realize that he loves brainy misfit Lindy (Vanessa Hudgens); if he can get her to feel likewise, the spell will be broken. Director Daniel Barnz casts his own spell of bad dialogue, soppy montages, and ringing cell phones as a plot device to ensure that the fairy tale retains no traces of the beautiful or bestial.
