Beastly is Beauty and the Beast for the Twilight generation. Featuring a cast top-heavy with TV actors and a screenplay that could have been given an assist by Stephanie Meyer, the end result would have ended up on the ABC Family Channel if it had been made by Disney. CBS Films apparently has higher aspirations for this dreadfully mediocre production, although the postponement of its release date (from its originally announced July 2010 to March 2011) may indicate diminished expectations.

Beauty and the Beast is a fairy tale and, when treated as a fantasy, it works as such. Beastly opts not only to modernize the story but to transplant it into the "real world." The result is a contrived mess. Characters act in bizarre ways for no reason other than that's what's required by the story, which follows the Disney version more closely than the original story (or the classic Cocteau interpretation). There are even stand-ins for Lumiere and Mrs. Potts although, sadly, Cogsworth got the ax.

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