Beastly (spoilers)

I didn't realise that there was a movie of this book until I tootled over to the author website, but there is, and it stars Alex Pettyfer who once ventured out as Alex Rider and remains a very pretty but slight actor, if the trailer is anything to go by (see below). It also has the charming Neil Patrick Harris, sadly not singing, dancing, but closer to his Dr Horrible persona than his Doogie Howser role.

Beastly is a modernisation of the Beauty and the Beast story told from the perspective of the Beast. It's a v. quick YA read, but little more than that. It's easy reading, but the characters were entering into cardboard territory and I felt the male narrator was unconvincing. Actually, he's totally utterly un-boylike. Yes, he's a nasty arrogant tw*t initially, but then he gets turned into a beast and starts reading books and bingo, he has become a sensitive rose-growing hunk of hairy wonderfulness whose favourite book is Jane Eyre. And of course, he is saved by True Love's Kiss. 

Now, I am a big fan of numerous fictional teenage males. I fell in love with Holden Caulfield when I was 12, and if my parents had confiscated my copy of Gone With the Wind, I'd simply fall back on my other re-read fave until they took Catcher in the Rye too. Other fictional teen males I've liked - Xander from Buffy, as well as the three geeks who try to be the Big Bad in season 6 but were generally outwitted and outsmarted, both Will Graysons (John Green and David Levithan), Chris and Sid from Skins, and now all four of the complete noodles in The Inbetweeners. The reason I like these particular teenagers is because they are plausible. They are vulnerable and crude and silly, obsessive, funny and exaggerated, certainly, but also, true. Unlike Adrian/Kyle of Beastly, who is more of a girl's wish-fulfilment, with some elements in common with Edward of Twilight including a slightly creepy tendency to watch his love object while she is unaware/asleep. 

Now, as a teacher who has taught Jane Eyre to adolescents of all genders, the whole bit where he fell for the romance in the book just didn't work for me. I've met boys who liked Jane Eyre because it has some horrible and exciting things happening in it, but Jane herself meh...and the whole Rochester/Jane thing, double-meh. So that didn't ring true. There were moments throughout when my willing suspension of disbelief was challenged - the chat-group run by Mr Anderson in which we hear about the Littlest Mermaid, the Frog Prince and the bear who gets to marry Snow White from Snow White and Rose Red, frex. The exchanges just seemed to be filler. 

Fairy tales are meant to be numinous and archetypal, but Beastly was too prosaic to work for me.