Beastly trades on Twilight's well-worn teenage supernatural angst

Director: Daniel Barnz
Starring: Alex Pettyfer, Vanessa Hudgens, Mary-Kate Olsen
*

Beauty and the Beast gets re-imagined as a teen drama with a pre-Magic Mike Alex Pettyfer as a pretty teen who is as shallow as he is handsome.

So a witchy classmate casts a spell that makes him "beastly" by covering his face and body in tattoos and scars (Pettyfer still looks good though, which hampers the plot somewhat) and the spell can only be broken if he finds a girl to love him before the year is up. Hello bookish Lindy (Hudgens), the answer to a beast's prayers.

Aimed squarely at Twilight's teenage fans, this is about as subtle as a baseball bat to the head and only marginally more enjoyable, thanks to a sparky performance from Neil Patrick Harris as a blind tutor. Badly written, blandly acted and utterly charmless - forget this and rewatch the lovely Disney animation instead.