Christina Ricci plays the cursed title character.
(Nick Wall/IFC Films)
Movie Review
There are probably worse things Christina Ricci could be doing in a movie than running around with a pig's snout. While you think of what they might be, Ricci dutifully carries this dollar-bin fairy tale about Penelope, an aristocrat whose porcine family curse has landed on her.
Penelope's mother (Catherine O'Hara) assumes the way to lift it is to have a blue-blooded gentleman wed her daughter. The groom will even come into Penelope's ample family fortune. But every prospective suitor runs screaming from her English mansion. Mom has hidden Penelope away from the world for decades. But a morose-looking gambler named Max (James McAvoy) is not completely appalled by her. Naturally, he's too good to be true.
Before long, Penelope escapes and discovers the world, and the media's discovery of her creates Penelope-mania, which she likes. From here the movie could have gone anywhere, especially once Reese Witherspoon turns up as Annie, a beery, horny, and jaded barfly. She shows Penelope London, gives her rides on her Vespa, and snaps the movie awake. A riskier movie might have these two flirt with each other. But the PG rating confirms that all risk has been beaten out of the movie in order to tickle the girls and young women who laughed and cooed at everything the night I saw it.
I guess the movie is exploring the issues of our times - our cruel aversion to the strange and the ugly, our sad bandwagon mentality, the case for magical nose jobs, the pitiful state of movies about young women. When someone asks Penelope if she has any other pig parts, a farce threatens to bubble up. Some dubious satire, too ("Pig Latin banned from schools!" one tabloid announces). But it comes to nothing. The director, Mark Palansky, doesn't push the movie far enough over the top. Maybe Craig Brewer, who directed Ricci to ludicrous sexual effect in "Black Snake Moan," might have been able to inject some carnality into the proceedings. Maybe Tim Burton, who directed Ricci in "Sleepy Hollow," could have given the movie a few shadows and some visual wit.
It wouldn't matter: The message in Leslie Caveny's script is ultimately too dispiriting a cop-out. This story could have gone in a number of more inspiring allegorical directions but winds up your average bedtime story instead.
What pleasures there are come from the cast. And even those are fleeting. O'Hara has a good time being snooty and shrilly narcissistic. Richard E. Grant is fine as dad. Peter Dinklage plays a reporter stalking Penelope, and the usual chip on his shoulder gets a sharp workout. McAvoy gets in some decent American accent practice. But that sleepy, mirthless face of his seems like a permanent condition, suggesting a place in only the most miserable movie romances. Needless to say, he should be perfectly at home here.
For her part, Witherspoon might have been more inventively comic with the pig snout than Ricci. She's always better dipped in acid or vinegar as opposed to honey. But here she proves she is just as good wallowing in lard.
Wesley Morris can be reached at wmorris@globe.com. For more on movies, go to boston.com/ae/movies/blog.
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