Monday’s Movie Musings; Beautiful Creatures (2013)

Monday’s Movie Musings is a new feature here at A Daydreamer’s Thoughts. The idea of this feature is to have all of my movie things occuring in one place. Whether it is a review, article, or something else, this feature will just be all about movies.

This week I have a review of Beautiful Creatures for you all.

Directed By: Richard LaGravenese
Adapted By: Richard LaGravenese
Book Written By: Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl
Production Company: Warner Bros Entertainment
Main Cast: Alden Ehrenreich, Alice Englert, Jeremy Irons, and Emma Thompson
Format: Cinema {OUT NOW}
Add It: IMDB

Summary:
(From IMDB) Ethan longs to escape his small Southern town. He meets a mysterious new girl, Lena. Together, they uncover dark secrets about their respective families, their history and their town.

There Is

After reading Beautiful Creatures last month, I really struggled to see why so many people were doting on the book. The characters weren’t likeable, the story was ruined by an awful ending, and the descriptions were long, unnessecary, and wholly boring. When it comes to the film, I decided to take the risk and see it to see if it managed to salvage the few good things I did like about the book. It is, therefore, with sadness that I now write this review because while the film was different from the book, it just wasn’t good enough to make me like it. I was needing this film to “wow” me, and it just didn’t.

A Hidden Curse

Taking the book out of the equation, I felt that the plot had a few fatal flaws. The film itself felt very rushed, leaving important details unexplained to audiences so tey had to bumble along in the dark. It also meant that the relationship between Lena and Ethan just happened so fast that there was no way to sort of show the build up of the emotions there – in my opinion. The final action scene was slightly less confusing than it was in the book, but the ending was still a large cop-out and not readily explained. I have a feeling many audience members simply wouldn’t understand the hows or whys, which is not a great thing for a film. I, obviously, had preconceptions about the film but I tried to look at it with open eyes but this films plot just did not work for me.

That Must

Ethan Wate is a good character in this film. You get a good feel for who he is and Alden Ehrenreich acted the part really well. You could appreciate his character. Lena was also a better character in the film than in the book, she was less whiny and more – full-speed ahead – but I’m still not sure if I liked her. Alice did do a good job acting the part and really suited the character though. Emma Thompson and Jeremy Irons were my favourite actors in this film bu far. Emma was absolutely outstanding in her performance and really made Mrs Lincoln everything I imagined her to be. Jeremy brought Macon to life really well also, you could really manage to capture the essence of his character and his actions which helped to make the film just a little bit more bearable.

Be Broken

The biggest thing that put me off this film was the CGI. In places it was spectacular and really worked well within the story but in others it was downright apalling. There were too many places where CGI was unnecessary but was used “simply because they could” and that, for me, really distracted me and pulled me further away from the film. I couldn’t become fully invested in the film when all I could see in front of me were flaws. There were also a few metaphor moments that had me rolling my eyes in agony at the simplistic and just over-used use of them. The cinematograpy was well used in the film, as were costume and sound effects. I just found it difficult to look passed the CGI which ended up reminding me of low-budget films even though this didn’t seem to be low-budget at all. Though, of the two friends I went with, I was the only one with major issues with the CGI so I know this is probably more of a personal thing to me than anything else!

To Save Her

By the end of the film, I couldn’t summarise my thoughts on the film. In fact, even now I’m unsure if I really hated it or if I just wasn’t expecting it, or what. But I do know that I definitely didn’t love it. It wasn’t a film that finished with me sitting in awe and wondering how something so amazing could have been created, but then, I also just never really expected this film to cause that reaction in me. I do know a few people who have really enjoyed this film but I just found that I personally couldn’t deal with it. Although, aside from the CGI, it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what it was that irritated me so much about the film. I think, essentially, the fact that everything I did actually like in the book failed to appear in the movie didn’t help the situation any. And I was spending too much of the film confused and trying to remember if this was a new plot point or not was a bit of an issue as well. I think this book has the potential to be liked, in the same way that Twilight was liked, but it just was not the right film for me personally.

Have you seen this film yet? What are your thoughts? Or, if you haven’t seen the film, will you?