Die Schöne und die Bestie

This is a very surprising movie. It is surprising, that a movie, any movie, can be accomplished with such a modest budget.

The plot is entertaining, I tried to imagine what it would look like if it was written as a book, and it sounded very nice. It represents a mixture of various myths, legends and tales, including "The Beauty and the Beast", "Quasimodo", "Sleeping Beauty" and, I believe, I detected some references to "Red Heat" - an interesting concept.

The actors' play is very butaphoric, but after the first 5 minutes I somehow got adjusted to it.

The really surprising thing about this movie is, that despite its ridiculousness, it is amusing. It is absurd and is fun. And I had great time watching it.

Firstly, this is NOT for CHILDREN, there are copious amounts of blood squirting scenes from severed limbs within the first ten minutes and my six year old has nightmares now... from BEAUTY AND THE BEAST???

The acting in this film is third if not tenth rate, and since when did they have mini skirts back in the day they are trying to portray... There is no thing believable (except the squirting blood to children) about this film, there is no heart to it, no pull or grab, I would liken it to an extremely bad comedy, as its acting is so poor, its comical they even let it be produced!

I found this film to just be a complete waste of time, and it is really not suitable for children under the age of ten at least, and even then will probably require parental guidance, so as to make light/jokes of the disgusting blood squirting scenes. Very bad taste.

David Lister's Blood of Beasts may have been the first film which I walked out of after five minutes. The only good thing about it was that it made this semi-remake a little easier to approach, because I had a better idea of what to expect. You may ask, why, if I disliked the first so much would I even bother thinking about this one? Let's just say that it was a chance to find out what I missed, without having to pay for the exact same movie. That wasn't such a good idea.

Even with my expectations set so low, the film still feels embarrassingly icky. I will let it go this time that the production looks like it was shot at the Renaissance fair with fifty bucks worth of props and costumes and a dozen extras who for all I know could have been stolen right out of the nearest homeless centre. It is obvious that this film (like the last one) has no money. What is unforgivable and totally unacceptable however is just how utterly kindergarden minded the screenplay is, as well as the performances. Beauty and the Beast is so stupid that it doesn't even work as an unintentional comedy. You'd have better luck with Battlefield Earth.

I have no good advice on how to approach this motion picture, and I cannot imagine how something like this finds its way to commercial video stores. Estella Warren is a 'very' pretty face, but that's about it.

What a waste,

Once upon a time, David Lister, the director of this version of Beauty and the Beasts(2009), directed another movie called Blood of Beasts(2003). It was another film based on Beauty and the Beast and it was awful, but terribly funny in a way it was never meant to be. Because Blood of Beasts(2003) was so awful, it made sick and twisted sense for him to try to go ahead and redo it.

With David Lister (as one of the most ineffective directors around), I knew what I was getting into. Low-budget? Yes. Bad costumes? Yes. Bad directing? Yes. Bad acting? Heh, let's try NO acting. It was perfectly set up for accidental comic brilliance.

Let me say this: David Lister has really out-done himself this time. Beauty and the Beasts(2009) is even worse than Blood of Beasts(2003), and that is no small feat.

I laughed the whole way through. Between the miniskirt with the brown vinyl corset thrown over it, inappropriate uses of CGI, the Botox lips-of-doom, the high school theatre costume department reject wigs, and the ketchup-for-blood effects, if I did not laugh I would have cried, it was that painful.

Even then, let's chalk that up to low-budgeting. If there are good actors and good directors, any film can shine. My favourite Beauty and the Beast film, the Czechoslovakian Panna a netvor(1978), is riddled with the signs of a low-budget: simple special-effects, second rate costumes, natural and sparse sets. Still Panna a netvor(1978) is brilliant, making up in plot, intensity and acting what it lacked in money. With this in mind, Beauty and the Beasts(2009) has no excuse.

It was excruciatingly painful, so much so that you have to be masochistic to watch it more than once, but I think I could have forgiven much of it had the film had even the barest sense of humour. Everyone takes themselves much too seriously. Imagine a campy Vincent Price flick like the Abominable Dr. Phibes(1971) in which they try to be serious? It wouldn't work, and it didn't work here.

I'll give it a point for the potential of the story. It was an interesting idea which happily did not conform to the established version of Beauty and the Beast, and it *could* have had interesting repercussions. Still, and not surprisingly, it failed to deliver.

This is the sort of traumatic experience in which an "I survived Beauty and the Beasts: A Dark Tale 2009" t-shirt should be made so that you can be admired and pitied all at once.

I think that 90 minutes are too much for that nonsense, I have not seen such horrible acting, bad directing or terrible dialogue. I have seen the cartoon, that was produced in 1991, which was marvelous compared to this failure.

Please, if you want to do something enjoyable stay away from this film and watch a football match, watch a silly comedy show or go to sleep.

But if you're going to watch it. remember that I warned you and say to your kids "don't be afraid from this fake beast, boys"

This film really deserves to be one of the worst 10 movies that can be watched ever.

I rated the film 1 because I couldn't rate it 0.