Beautiful Creatures was the selected movie this year for our Valentine's Day date because apparently Bruce Willis in A good Day to Die Hard does not constitute as a romantic date movie, who knew? While initially I am sure many of you that have not heard anything about this film or even saw the trailer for Beautiful Creatures might have thought that it does not seem a great movie for what is supposed to be the most romantic night of the year. However, after last years bomb of the choice of The Vow, we figured that a movie choice could not get much worse then The Vow. The key component for me in enjoying this movie was that of I went into the film not expecting a supernatural movie like the Twilight movies, but expecting something different. Now with this being adapted from a book series, it is important to view this movie as being something completely separate from the book for any of those that have read the book.
The cast for Beautiful Creatures were pretty enjoyable. I really enjoyed Emma Thompson in her role of Mrs. Lincoln/Sarafine. She played the role of the ultra conservative southern woman that was anything, but welcoming to outsiders to perfection and her playing Saraphine the most powerful dark caster was a great change of pace from her. She brought a lot of darkness into that role and it suited her well. Jeremy Irons in the role of Macon Ravenwood, while he was not nearly the way I pictured him in the book, his performance has grown on me since I saw the movie. In my head I pictured Ravenwood looking more like Lucious Malfoy in the Harry Potter movies with the way he looked and carried himself. One of the casting aspects that I felt was a little lacking was that of the supposed "Barbie" Cheer leading squad. They did not meet my expectation for what I was expecting from them. While I enjoyed the supporting cast the two main characters played by Aden Ehrenreich and Alice Englert as they really met their characters. Ehrenreich as Ethan Wate really played the longing to be out of a small town with strength that I was not expecting. Englert as Lena Duchannes though was a complete surprise to me her performance was really strong and only built throughout the movie as her powers became stronger and stronger. This really worked perfectly and the chemistry between her and Ehrenreich was definitely apparent and really made for strength in the movie ass it made the bond between the characters not only stronger, but in my mind stronger then Bella and Edward ever were onscreen.
The storyline while it has the elements of a romantic story that we see so much, including the Romeo and Juliet forbidden romance, it ends up being a lot more then just the sappy love story which is all we get at times in so many of these types of movies. Instead, Beautiful Creatures add aspects of mysteries, prophecies, curses, Southern small town politics, religion, death and evil forces which when combined together rather then making it all feel convoluted makes for a rather interesting story. While a lot of those that read the book feel like they changed too much from the book it is important to remember that this movie is actually an adaptation from the novel. While I think they kept out of key concept of how Lena and Ethan could communicate to one another telepathically, they had to really make this book an adaptation because their was so much material that they just did not have the time to put it into a two hour movie. I felt that they captured a good two hour story and told a good story. The aspect that helped the story as well was the musical soundtrack used. The mix of classical, blues, country and alternative music worked well together and really gave the movie a different feel.
Beautiful Creatures was a movie that even though I had read the book it ended up exceeded the expectations I had going in. The acting from Emma Thompson, Jeremy Irons and Viola Davis were pretty much what I would expect from actors that are so well known and always give strong performances. I was really surprised at the ability of the two main characters to be as strong as these well known actors in their roles. I enjoyed the story as it really took a lot of elements and mixed them in stronger then I would expect. I am giving Beautiful Creatures three buckets of popcorn out of five. This is a movie that while it is getting compared to the Twilight movies and books, in my mind it is only similar to Twilight because it also deals with supernatural forces. It will be intriguing to see if they do additional movies to go with the other books that are in the series or if this film goes the way of the Eragon movie and never get a sequel. This is a movie that I am sure we may add to the movie collection because my wife enjoyed it, and it will be a movie that I will have no problem watching from time to time.
-The Movie Man
