Premise: An ancient curse falls upon a young girl, causing her to be raised in extreme privacy while her mom tries to find a way to remove the affliction.
Stars: Christina Ricci * James McAvoy * Reese Witherspoon * Catherine O'Hara * Peter Dinklage * Simon Woods
Story: Penelope (Ricci) is the victim of an ancient curse placed upon her family and is born with the nose and ears of a pig. Her mother (O'Hara) has her publicly (pretend) buried to stop the press from hounding the child. She believes that the only way to remove the curse is to marry Penelope to another blue-blood family and as a result the first third of the movie is filled with horrified suitors fleeing the family home. One such suitor, Edward (Woods), gets together with a reporter (Dinklage) that has history with the family. They hire another suitor, Max (McAvoy), as a mark to prove to the world that Penelope is a monster, but McAvoy falls in love with the cursed maiden.
Crushed when Max tells her he can't marry her, Penelope escapes the home and wanders around in the real world, coming across another young woman (Witherspoon) who helps her have fun. When her identity is discovered, people are more concerned with her well-being while the paparazzi make a spectacle out of the newly rediscovered heiress. Edward continues his gaffes and is forced by his father to marry the young woman, only to have Penelope discover the truth - that she only needs to love herself in order to be happy and free of the curse.
Review: The movie is a charming modern fairytale - light and full of fluff. Ricci is charming and cute throughout the movie, which seriously undercuts the effect of the curse - noticeably the over-large piggish ears never appear once Penelope is being played by Ricci, leaving her simply as having a piggish nose. With the amazing eyes that Ricci has, the "horrifying" aspect of the curse is hardly apparent.
(Unless, of course, the intent is to show the totally superficial nature of modern folks - that a piggish nose is too much to bear - in that case, the movie does succeed as the suitors all seem equally idiotic.)
McAvoy, Woods, and Dinklage all deliver nice performances - as the love interest, the bumbling villain and the intrepid reporter, respectively.
O'Hara, however, seems to be channeling her perfomance as Delia from Beetle Juice - the OCD-driven, controlling nature. Later, inexplicably, once the curse is removed, the character has a moment of growth, only to retreat.
The film gets choppily edited towards the end - in the drive to give Penelope a happy ending, her mother is inexplicably cursed, the butler is revealed to be the old witch (who somehow survived a few hundred years), Penelope becomes a teacher, and lastly the wrap up of the love affair is rushed.
If not for the botched, rushed ending (probably at the hands of the Weinstein brothers who believe they know how to make every movie better, lots of instances notwithstanding), the film could've been much better. As it stands, it's still charming and the goodwill built early on sustains the movie.
Overall: Mediocre
Other sites: IMDb * Wikipedia * AllMovie * Rotten Tomatoes
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