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Review
Archives
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Today's
Date is:
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Beautiful
Creatures
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Reviewed
by: |
Clare
Warmke |
| Genre: |
Drama |
| Video: |
Anamorphic
Widescreen 1.85:1 |
| Audio: |
Dolby Digital
5.1 Surround; DTS 5.1 Surround |
| Language: |
English |
| Subtitle: |
English,
French |
| Length: |
1 hour 29
minutes |
| Rating: |
R |
| Release
Date: |
10-2-01 |
| Studio: |
Universal
Studios |
| Commentary:
|
None |
| Documentaries:
|
None |
| Featurettes:
|
None |
| Filmography/Biography:
|
Brief bios with filmographies
of actors Rachel Weisz, Susan Lynch, Iain Glen, Maurice Roeves,
Alex Norton and director Bill Eagles |
|
Interviews: |
None |
| Trailers/TV
Spots: |
One theatrical trailer
|
| Alternate/Deleted
Scenes: |
None |
| Music
Video: |
None |
| Other:
|
None |
| Cast
and Crew: |
Rachel Weisz,
Susan Lynch, Iain Glen, Maurice Roeves, Alex Norton, Tom Mannion
|
| Screenplay
by: |
Simon Donald
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| Produced
by: |
Alan J. Wands and Simon
Donald |
| Directed
By: |
Bill Eagles
|
| Music: |
Murray Gold
|
| The
Review: |
From the
packaging of this DVD, you’d think this is a flick that hetero
guys would eat up. The black-and-white cover shot shows a bombshell
blond Rachel Weisz sexily teasing her lower lip with long fingers,
and Susan Lynch is the dark, defiant beauty in the background.
The main photo on the back of the DVD package is again Rachel
Weisz, this time barely clutching a silk sheet to her probably
naked body as she descends a staircase. Beautiful Creatures
is no guy ride, however – at least not for guys who are paying
attention. Dorothy (Lynch) stumbles across Petula (Weisz) being
beaten and strangled by her boyfriend when she’s on the run
from her own deranged and abusive lover. In a rescue attempt
that goes from bad to worse, Dorothy clobbers the boyfriend
with a lead pipe and helps Petula drag his not-dead-yet body
back to Dorothy’s apartment. In true movie plotting style, Dorothy
and Petula decide not to simply fess up when the boyfriend finally
bites it, and instead launch a ridiculous chain of events that
leads to more corpses and lots of money. No guy comes off clean
in this movie, even the innocuous young kiosk clerk from whom
Dorothy buys her cigarettes. Dorothy’s snappy scolding when
she finds him reading a magazine called Chicks in Chains – “You
shouldn’t read that shite, you know, ’cause it seriously, badly
exploits women” – doesn’t stop his bad behavior. The kiosk clerk’s
reactions are a hilarious microcosm of a major premise of this
movie – men are stupid, stupid, stupid and mean when in the
presence of a sexy woman. Bombshell Petula gets it the worst.
She spends most of the movie being unwantingly touched and threatened
by aroused men. Beautiful Creatures bends some of the unofficial
rules of gender on screen. First, there are two female protagonists
who develop a tight bond (without becoming lovers – sorry, guys)
and who, despite a series of bad choices, hold much of the power
in the plot. Second, there’s no male hero who sweeps in to save
the day. In fact, there’s no man in the movie other than the
freckled kiosk clerk who doesn’t come off as a complete demon.
And while a story of murders and ransom does not exactly give
a female audience a redeeming and accurate example of what it
means to be a woman who has survived abuse and lives on, it
does at least give us a twist on the standard faint-hearted
leading lady. But a few things can be said for sure: Beautiful
Creatures is fast-paced, engaging and thankfully, doesn’t live
up to its packaging. |
| Image
and Sound |
The
use of color could have been carried through to greater benefit
in this film. An interesting juxtaposition of gender seems to
occur in the use of color, but gets lost at various points in
the movie. Often, when the women appear together, there’s a
blue, calm undertone to the entire shot, no matter how manic
and upset the women are acting. When shots are exclusively of
men, a brownish-red undertone takes over, giving the shot a
much darker feel. The color shifts aren’t overt, and great attention
is given especially to Petula’s skin tone, which is in various
states of bruising and recovery as the film progresses. There’s
a color glitch in the first third of the movie, where a scene
mistakenly clicks to a darker shade mid-stream, but that seems
to be the only actual mistake in the film’s imaging. Juxtaposition
is also a good word to describe the sound in this film. Music
and action collide in all dramatic scenes. Heated arguments
are covered by numbers like Dean Martin’s silky dance tune “Sway”;
terrifying chase scenes have light, lilting background music.
Only toward the middle of the film, when the subplots are being
revealed, does the music become more raucous. Each music choice
adds to the energy and flush-faced momentum of the film, and
the sound quality is lively throughout. Sound isn’t used in
any way on the menu screens of the DVD – perhaps a missed opportunity
to further set the tone. |
| The
Extras |
The
extras in this package have the feel of a project hurriedly
assigned to a film studio intern. Most extras offer simply more
text, like the scant “Production Notes” that give little insight
into the development of this film. The bios offered in the “Cast
and Filmmakers” section are usually one or two skimpy screens
of small, illegible print, focusing primarily on listing the
actors’ most recent jobs, and then listing them again in a filmography
compilation. Weirdly, actor Tom Mannion and screenplay writer
Simon Donald are listed on the screen that links to bios of
the other actors and director, but no information is compiled
for them. One nice feature of the extras is that the scene selection
function offers stills of the scene’s action, so it’s easy to
find a specific part of the movie quickly. The theatrical trailer
is as past-faced as the movie, but reveals too much about the
subplots. However, in less than two minutes the trailer is able
to capture the dark humor of the movie exceedingly well. |
| Commentary |
None |
| Final
Words: |
Women with a dark sense of humor
will love this film. It’s girly and honest while at the same
time being completely ridiculous and morose – the kind of
movie where you almost expect the two women leads to exchange
friendship bracelets while they stand amongst a heap of dead
bodies. There’s clothes borrowing, there’s pillow fighting,
there’s meaningful hugs – but there’s also severed fingers,
bleeding eyeballs, nasty murders and serious temper tantrums.
Because the extras add zilch to this disc’s appeal, rent it
first to see if you’re made of the same stuff Dorothy and
Petula are.
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