October 15, 2008
Fairy tale 'Penelope' is just a lot of slop
(C) Penelope stars Christina Ricci as Penelope Wilhern, a blue-blood born with a pig's snout because of a curse put on the Wilhern clan when it refused to let one of her 19th-century forebears marry a servant girl. She can break the curse only when a fellow aristocrat vows to love her for life, so her mother (Catherine O'Hara) hides her away in the family manse until she's of a marriageable age.
Not even the most careful preparation can keep a succession of upper-class twits from jumping out a second-story window when they finally clap eyes on her. The movie is about what happens after one of those marital petitioners (Simon Woods) goes public with his sighting of Penelope, and a would-be fiance with some big secrets of his own (James McAvoy) really does fall in love with her.
I found the sight of McAvoy as a piano player in jazzy-seedy duds a lot more disconcerting than Ricci's porcine prosthesis. McAvoy sacrifices his own charm to channel the reedlike intensity of Adrien Brody's pianist from a few years back (he even resembles Brody slightly here). He burdens the whimsy with an unwonted urgency.
On the other hand, the more extreme O'Hara's hysteria, the funnier she becomes -- when this performer shrieks, she's a scream. And Reese Witherspoon shows up as a chivalrous city gal with a Vespa instead of a white horse. She delivers one of her freest, grittiest turns since Freeway (a little-known, scabrous update of Little Red Riding Hood).
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Appaloosa was a very entertaining movie filled to the brim with character studies. The interaction of the lead characters was worth the price of admission.
Submitted by Ken
10:44 AM EDT, Oct 4, 2008
Why no mention or review of "An American Carol?" Seems like liberal Hollywood is hoping this movie goes away quickly and you the "objective" newspaper and willing to aid and abet. And you wonder why subscriptions are in the tank?
Submitted by Objective
6:25 AM EDT, Oct 4, 2008
Shia was great and apparently the audiences love him. He's been in 4 #1 hits in the last 18 months. John Cusak could never make the same claim.
Submitted by Shia LeBeouf Fan
8:00 PM EDT, Oct 3, 2008
No actor today has better oddball control than Ricci, but even she has a hard time figuring out what spin the filmmakers want to put on Penelope's story. As you watch Penelope, you keep waiting for emotions to build and themes to emerge with fablelike clarity. It touches on any number of up-to-date subjects, from tabloid frenzy to the public's surprising willingness to embrace the new.
At its core, though, the movie lacks the sureness and lucidity of even a fractured fairy tale.
The first half grows increasingly claustrophobic, and when Penelope breaks out of her estate and discovers the bright lights of the metropolis beyond, she and the audience feel relief instead of magical release. You wish you were watching Babe: Pig in the City.
The director, Mark Palansky, and the screenwriter, Leslie Caveney, throw in a tag scene in which a bunch of tykes guess at the story's themes. They include the rottenness of the upper-crust, the blameworthiness of mothers, and "it's not the power of the curse, but the power you give the curse."
Maybe they should have put that last idea at the beginning, since the biggest problem with the movie is that even with a pig's snout, Ricci is awfully cute. She spends 90 minutes learning to love herself when we fall for her in 30 seconds flat.
>>>Penelope (Summit Entertainment) Starring Christina Ricci, Catherine O'Hara. Directed by Mark Palansky. Rated PG for some sexual references and language. Time 103 minutes.
michael.sragow@baltsun.com
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