Beastly

Since Beastly is the sort of disastrously terrible monstrosity that can only be appreciated by fans of unintentional humour, elderly gay men and tween America's Next Top Model viewers, the over-the-top, borderline incoherent alternate ending included with the DVD release is an absolute must-have. Similarly, the refrigerator magnet of the teen stars in a warm embrace that also comes with the DVD is a fantastic camp score now proudly displayed on my fridge just below an abundance of dirty "create your own phrase" magnets and a Remax calendar from 2008. Said alternate ending doesn't come as a surprise necessarily and actually suits the awkwardly conceived, dippy, faux-comic and melodramatic tone of the film, following the source Beauty and the Beast mythology more literally than the uninspired, tacked on denouement associated with the theatrical run. After the vapid, self-obsessed (but surprisingly bland and unappealing) Kyle (Alex Pettyfer) is cursed with ugliness by vampy goth chick with a Mike Tyson tat Kendra (Mary-Kate Olsen, channelling her inner-Uma Thurman, circa Batman & Robin), he has to earn the love of the quirky, bookish Lindy (Vanessa Hudgens) within a year or suffer a lifetime in the body of the "beast." Having won her interest with Jujubes and a sad story involving dead baby elephants, he then sacrifices himself for her in an unlikely shootout, only to be saved by a crystalline tear of love from her eye. It's hilarious! What better way to end a film that features a blind, dart-playing Neil Patrick Harris prone to shouting "Whassup?," along with a wise Jamaican housemaid that dreams only of being reunited with her three children back home? I mean, there's a tearful scene of the beast deleting his MySpace profile and a montage of white rose petals blowing across the screen whenever time passes or something romantic happens, so why not go full tilt cheesy melodrama and own the cliché of the single tear? Fortunately, this fantastically awful climax is available to home viewers, along with the "Be Mine" music video by Kristina & the Dolls, which is about as awesome as it sounds. It's almost too much to take in after embracing the heartfelt and truly complex message of beauty only being skin deep.