It seems that once the Twilight rating and the box office started to face the same direction, Hollywood began to hunt looking for an additional romantic Young Adult vamp romance polished with unexplored sub-genre. And there has been no dearth of that especially with the same thread of supernatural love. This year alone brings Warm Bodies, The Host, Mortal Instruments and … Beautiful Creatures 1319 words.
Although the film is based on the first book of the lit franchise’s fanfiction, Beautiful creatures puts the focus on a teenager Ethan (Alden Ehrenreich) who is desperate to break free from the dead end southern town he has been trapped in. Ethan has only one friend at school who happens to be a geek named Link (Thomas Mann) then mysterious Lena (Alice Englert) comes in. Lena is a newcomer and a victim of class mate Emily (Zoey Deutch), who disrespects her unusual family along with Link’s zealot Christian mother (Emma Thompson). Dissapointly, Ethan and Lena fall for each other and poor Ethan learns the horrifying revelation: Lena is a caster. A magic one.
Beautiful Creatures quickly settles into place after the crucial discovery by Ethan. Ethan is quite a pleasant character who is also found reading Kurt Vonnegut and J.D. Salinger’s books and wishing for a life he does not have. Mystery is also present at the point of Lena’s entrance, and over the film, the two share lovely moments. However, once her powers are introduced, Beautiful Creatures gets mired beneath a lecherous bog of telling.
The problem is, in other words, there is a lot that needs comprehension. Firstly, one of the general concepts, the casters … well, they seem to be witches … they are simple y enough. Next, the ‘claiming’ where a six h birthday of the caster marks a turning point of being claimed for the light side or dark side, and by which time, there shall be no chance of a good or evil. Then there is a mysterious locket that Ethan has, that has magical properties but only when worn by him and Lena at the same time. Besides, there are Lena’s relatives, the all circumstances of which are bitter, and her uncle Macon (Jeremy Irons), a dark turned uncle who is still in the process of being light. And her cousin Ridley (Emmy Rossum) dark turned siren and movie cosplayer.
Ethan’s father also has Amma (Viola Davis), a “seer” with powers who is a librarian. Additionally, there’s the family history of Lena and her evil mother trying to kill Ethan, so putting lights out will keep her alive. Certainly, these things would be quite simple to grasp while going through the book. But on screen writer director Richard LaGravanese has no option but to carry a lot of tedious lucid explanation.
Building on the over-arching theme of Beautiful Creatures, where Lena needs to ‘own’ herself, the film is rather sexist. There’s a lot about the fear of becoming a powerful woman, Ethan jokes about Lena ‘turning into her mother’ and then asks Lena, after her explaining Ridley’s control over men, ‘isn’t that the definition of a bitch’?
The scene of the family fighting with their powers among themselves is childishly annoying, as it is too comic, especially for a drama. CGI is sometimes quite exaggerated, which taken in small sections would be okay and some of the performing was rather unnecessary excessive too. And at slightly less than two hour mark Beautiful Creatures seems to stretch itself too much and drags on too long before it finishes. One welcome feature, even if it is not realistic, is that there are no cell phones, laptops and other modern electronics.
These are teenagers who rather read poems of beat generation writers and argue about Bukowski and Titanic beside fast. This appears to be modeled after the actors themselves; Alice and Alden both are very bright and very good. They do what they can, but in the end, they cannot rescue the Beautiful Creatures from its very confusing storyline.
Judgment
Beautiful Creatures has its highs but is burdensome because of the excessive exposition, the overlong duration of the film, and abrupt shifts in the tone of the movie. This is just for teenage followers of the book who are sure going to relish watching the characters come into life with the help of two intelligent young protagonists.
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