Metacritic reviews

Witty, warm, well-cast and often wickedly funny.

Beastly, for all its potential pitfalls, works better than it has any right to. Credit Barnz, who keeps his young characters contemporary in a world of text messaging and status updates and yet also gives them depth.

The idea of transformation, that people can change and learn from their mistakes, growing to be better, makes Beastly not just sweetly romantic but also quietly hopeful.

A kiss may cure the monster, but not even campy performances from Mary-Kate Olsen and Neil Patrick Harris can save this ugly snarl of cliches.

Beastly offers a thoroughly dopey reread of the "Beauty and the Beast" fairy tale.

Loosely adapted from Alex Flinn's young-adult novel, this "Beauty and the Beast" update is a pallid, formulaic teen romance that might have benefited from a little snark.

Rarely do films from Hollywood emerge in such an inane manner. Its rote characters are inevitably in predictable situations with no subtext or subtlety to any of their predicaments.

The characterization couldn't be more flagrant if the soundtrack creaked out an oldie by a certain ancient pop quintet: You're a candy girl.

There is one good thing you can say about Beastly: The title perfectly sums up what you'll see on screen.

In every aspect, from story to tone to characterization to visual aesthetic, it's laughably perfunctory, as though everyone involved were too embarrassed to give it more than a half-ironic token effort.