Why do I do this to myself?
I swear I find myself watching the worst of the worst YA movie adaptations from the past decade. And yet the ones that have come out in the last two or 3 years have all been pretty great. Sadly, today’s pick is one one of the good ones, it’s one of the really terrible ones.
This movie is so odd. The fact is that it has a superb, star studded cast, and I am so confused by how terrible the movie is with such a great cast. You have Jeremy Irons, Emma Thompson, Emmy Rossum, Viola Davis. And I wonder if they knew what they were signing up for.
Now, I’ll admit I didn’t really care for the book version of this either. Honestly the only character I liked in either version was Ridley. And sometimes Lena’s mom. Why is it that only the villains are particularly interesting in this?
Lena and Ethan are seriously the most boring, angsty, and unpleasant teenagers in YA film. I want to smack both of them upside the head. but they’re like that in the book too so adaptation wise I suppose that’s pretty accurate. It’s the side characters that give this movie any entertainment value.
And I think that’s why this is one of those films that so entertainingly bad that I’ll actually watch it more than once. My friends and I put on this movie for what we called “Bad YA Movie Night” in which we would get snacks and drinks and sass our way through movies like Twilight, its many sequels, and this.
As an adaptation I don’t think its that bad, because I don’t think the book was good to begin with. The film is bad, because the story is bad. And they didn’t do enough rewriting so salvage the film. Admittedly, there’s also plenty in the movie that’s just bad filmmaking too, butat this point I don’t think anyone cared.
For instance, both Irons and Thompson completely phoned in their performances, which is sad considering I love both actors. Neither seemed to care much, and since the main characters were so bad the whole movie collapses. I think even good performances from both couldn’t have saved it.
This is an incredibly bad movie, but its entertainingly so. It’s campy, it’s weird, and the acting is horrible, but something about it makes it worth repeated watching if only to trash it with your friends.
What did you think about Beautiful Creatures? Share your thoughts in the comments.
From my shelf to yours,
Erin
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