"Beastly" Mess

      I know millions of dollars are spent by movie studios to ensure a movie will appeal to the widest possible audience. It's to their advantage to do this.
     However, whoever Paramount Pictures hired to research the audience members for "Beastly" must have spent their time playing with the aps on their phones instead.
     The trailers promised a touching remake of the "Beauty and the Beast"  fairy tale with super hot stars Alex Pettyfer and Vanessa Hudgens. It looked like a promising date movie.
     Every promise was broken. I honestly believe I could have rewritten this story and directed it with better results.
    "Beastly" is solely for the young girls who also love the "Twilight" series.
    The plot stars Kyle (Pettyfer), a young, rich, arrogant and of course ridiculously handsome young man deliberately using his looks to get whatever he wants, and amuses his minions by needling the "ugly" kids at his school, including a  Wiccan outcast, Kendra (Mary-Kate Olsen).
    Kendra taunts back, and smiles mysteriously when Kyle tries to best her.
    It's at a dance where Kendra casts her spell, telling the spoiled boy he is going to have unpleasant facts to deal with if he ever expects to get what he really wants.
    At the fringes of this crowd is Lindy (Hudgens), a beautiful scholarship student who watches Kyle with puppy-dog eyes, and something in him responds to her at a dance where their have their photograph taken.
   We have our noses rubbed into the fact that all Kyle's actions are designed to get his news anchor father to notice him and show even the tiniest bit of affection.
   After the dance,  Kyle discovers his outer beauty has been stripped away, leaving the ugly person underneath to face the world with no crutches. Kendra has told him he has one year to find someone who will love him exactly the way he is, or he will stay in his tattooed and scarred body.
   The sole bright spot is Kyle's blind tutor, wryly played by Neil Patrick Harris.
  If you are not familiar with this plot, don't spend good money on this movie to discover what happens. Either rent Disney's animated classic, "Beauty and the Beast" or the classic, live-action 1976 Hallmark Hall of Fame version with George C. Scott.
  Seriously, only tween and young teen girls will enjoy this movie. It would be best to let them see this one on their own and save your own money to see any other movie.

• "Beastly"
• No stars
• Rated PG-13
• 1:35 minutes
• Cast: Alex Pettyfer, Vanessa Hudgens, Mary-Kate Olsen, Neil Patrick Harris, Peter Krause.
• (Language including crude comments, brief violence and some thematic material)