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Rating:  - A Very Cute Girl- uh, I Mean Film. Cute Film
I was pleasantly surprised by this movie, as I entered it with zero expectation for enjoyment. As a guy, I am not inclined to fantasy/romances.
However, this movie was well cast, making the characters very enjoyable.(Especially Penelope's mom, played brilliantly by Catherine O'Hara.) And despite the pig snout, cute Christina Ricci alone made it worth the money. James McAvoy also turned in a nice performance. (Special note to the scene when he sings "You Are My Sunshine.") And Reese Witherspoon was awesome!
Sure it got cheesy at times, but what else can we expect from a PG love movie? I definately recommend seeing this film. It'll be worth your time and money.
Rating: - Great film with a top notch cast and redeeming storyline -- families can enjoy together!
The premise is simple--there's a curse on the Vaderman family, and Penelope (Christina Ricci) is caught in its cross hairs. Born with a pig's nose and ears, she's lived her whole life in solitude. Her overprotective parents (Catherine O'Hara and Simon Woods) can't bear the thought of her being treated like a freak. So rather than let her develop character outside, they've kept her locked away inside their mansion, away from the cruel dark world. This unfortunately sends the message to their beloved daughter that looking different is the worst of all fates.
There's only one way the curse can be broken. Once Penelope is loved by one of her own kind the pig nose will disappear. So her mother has made it her mission in life to find her daughter a suitable, blue-blooded gentleman to marry. It's no easy task. Every guy who gets close enough to see Penelope's nose in all its glory ends up jumping out of a window to escape. But then Max (James McAvoy) shows up with an ulterior motive, and things take a turn no one expected. Could he be the one?
At first glance you might not think a movie about an otherwise beautiful young woman with a snout could be both entertaining and inspiring. It's true that in less skilled hands this film could've been comedic to the point of ridiculous. It could've overemphasized its message. Thankfully it's done neither. Penelope blends humor into its fairtale premise with all the right flourishes. Catherine O'Hara in particular delivers the best dead-pan lines. Reese Witherspoon's supporting but all too short role as a street-wise courier who befriends Penelope reminds us why America awarded her its People's Choice Award for Favorite Female Movie Star and Favorite Leading Lady in 2008. She's also one of Penelope's producers, so her influence runs even deeper than her performance.
Viewers looking for romance won't be disappointed. James McAvoy delivers yet another terrific performance here as a scruffy, down-on-his-luck gambler. This time around his accent is American, and he pulls it off well. Though why an actor with a Scottish accent in real-life would go American in a film that appears to take place in Britain is a little confusing. And am I the only one who can't stop thinking of him as Mr. Tumnus of Narnia fame? Perhaps the stand-out role belongs to Peter Dinklage, a reporter with slightly nefarious intentions and a nagging conscience. Interestingly, Dinklage also has a Narnia connection. He's slotted to play Trumpkin the dwarf in Prince Caspian.
Without giving too much away, let's just say there is certainly some predictability in the film's plot. But that's to be expected in the romance/comedy genre. Yet Penelope manages a refreshing twist you might not see coming.
Rated PG for some language (h-- and d-- are uttered several times), and a few off color remarks, Penelope is still a film families can enjoy together. Maybe it won't win an Oscar, but Penelope's top-notch cast and redeeming storyline make it worth the drive if it's not in your local theater. Hopefully this little gem won't get lost in the shuffle of the blockbusters.
--Reviewed by C.J. Darlington for TitleTrakk
Rating:  - A Charming and Delightful Fairy Tale
In this funny, cute movie, Christina Ricci stars as the young heiress Penelope. Penelope has been struck by the Wilhern family curse which causes her to have the snout and ears of a pig. The curse can only be lifted until one of her own kind loves her, which the family interprets as getting a fellow blueblood to marry her. Poor Penelope has to deal with rejection after rejection as one handsome, well-bred suitor after another pursues her for her good family name and large dowry and then flees in terror (jumping out windows to do so) as soon as he catches sight of her face. What makes it even worse is that her well-meaning but utterly shallow mother (Catherine O'Hara) is too ashamed of Penelope to let anyone but the carefully selected suitors see her daughter and keeps her isolated within the family mansion. She even went so far as to fake Penelope's death as a baby to avoid the press from getting any pictures of her cursed daughter. Furthermore, she constantly reminds Penelope that the curse is also a burden for the entire family and Penelope's goal in life is to break the curse and become prettier. Penelope's long-suffering father (Richard E. Grant) loves his daughter and is obviously exasperated by his wife's attitude, but seems too hen-pecked to stand up to his wife and insist that they allow Penelope out into the real world (the two parents remind very much of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet of Pride & Prejudice).
When one particularly excitable and nasty suitor, Edward Vanderman (Simon Woods), runs to the press with the story that there is a pig-monster in the Wilhern household, no one believes him and he is made a laughing stock of the city. However, tabloid reporter Lemon (Peter Dinklage), who lost one of his eyes attempting to get a picture of baby Penelope, believes the Vanderman heir and agrees to try and prove Penelope's existence. Lemon tracks down a handsome young gambler with the appropriate lineage, Max Campion (James McAvoy), to pose as Penelope's suitor and get a picture of her. Max and Penelope start falling for each other while Penelope is hidden behind a two-way mirror and Max starts having second thoughts about his participation in the scheme to expose Penelope. After revealing her face to Max, Penelope takes his reaction as a rejection and decides that she's tired of waiting to break a curse that she's starting to think can never be broken. So, armed with a scarf to hide her nose, Penelope runs away to experience life outside her mansion. In the city she makes friends with the eccentric bike messenger Annie (Reese Witherspoon) and sees how much she was missing out on life by hiding from everyone.
I went to see this movie with three female friends and we all completely loved it. It had a cute, whimsical feel, somewhat reminiscent of Pushing Daisies. Christina Ricci is charming as the sweet but weary Penelope and James McAvoy proves once again that he's great as the romantic lead. My favorite minor character is Lemon, who starts out as the possible villain, seeing as how he wants to expose Penelope to the world, but who is really not a bad person at all. Catherine O'Hara as the mother is a scene-stealer, although her character's tragic focus on beauty keeps her from being one of my favorite characters (what is even scarier is that there really are mothers like this out there).
The biggest complaint my friends and I had was that James McAvoy wasn't allowed to keep his Scottish accent, which was odd because the movie wasn't set in any particular city or country and several of the extras did have British accents (McAvoy did a fine American accent, but we would have preferred his original one). It was also a bit silly that the suitors were so horrified by Penelope's appearance that they'd jump out windows to escape her, considering that even with a snout Christina Ricci was still pretty darn cute. The movie also got a little cheesy near the end, but it kept itself from going completely into cheesy territory with the mother's continued shallowness. This is highly recommended for anyone who is looking for a light, diverting film and I definitely plan on buying the DVD.
Rating: - Penelope is the girl we can learn from
Penelope has finally found its opening weekend and my review is as simple as this: Go SEE it in the theatre because it is a rare, wonderful, sharply comedic and quick-moving film. Support a movie in a theatre that uses great set designs which includes art by Joe Sorren: In Celebration of Balance & Opposable Thumbs and includes music by Sigur Rós Takk.... Chase scenes are not predictable. Penelope covers, in a few comical moments, what else would a person do who was confined to one house their entire life? I enjoyed the "who's real" and "who's fake" process of elimination and how one copes when you only find the latter. The characters are well-crafted and played by some of my favorite people, obviously Christina Ricci, but also minor characters played by Burn Gorman (Torchwood - The Complete First Season), Nick Frost (Hot Fuzz (3-Disc Collector's Edition) and Shaun of the Dead), and the ever-watchable (getting all the laughs when I saw the movie) Peter Dinklage which you've seen in The Station Agent and Death at a Funeral, plus Marianne Faithfull is in it (uncredited) and she really is as great looking as I remember her from the brief appearance she made in BBC's Absolutely Fabulous - Absolutely Everything. The story's moral is powerful: embrace individuality. It's as simple as that and I would love a poster of this phrase on every street corner to remind those people that forget to do it.
Rating: - The Girl Without a Face
"Penelope" is about a girl who was born with the nose and ears of a pig, so I think the message it's sending to the audience is obvious: you have to love yourself no matter what others think. This isn't to say that the film is bad or even that it doesn't work; in all honesty, I thoroughly enjoyed it. "Penelope" is a delightful, charming little fantasy, full of humor and heart with just a touch of magic to top everything off. I mean that as more than just a corny phrase for a movie review--the general look of the film has a slight surrealistic edge, so slight that at times it's hard to pick up on. But it's there, believe me. It's most noticeable in the design, color, condition, and population of the city, a place never directly named but somewhat reminiscent of London. A somewhat unrealistic location requires a somewhat unrealistic character; we find this in Penelope Wilhern (Christina Ricci), a sweet and charming young girl from a rich family who's having a lot of trouble finding a husband.
There's a very good reason for this. Apparently, her great grandfather--a blue-blooded man of wealth and distinction--was secretly having an affair with a servant girl. When he decided to completely forget about her and marry the rich woman he was arranged with, the servant girl killed herself by jumping off a cliff. The servant girl's mother, who practiced witchcraft, retaliated by placing a curse on the entire Wilhern family: every daughter would thereafter be born ugly, doomed to spend their lives as lonely social outcasts. The curse could only be broken if one of the daughter's own kind--presumably a blue-blooded type--learns to accept her for who she is. The Wilhern family was lucky for many years because, by some strange twist of fate, they produced only sons (the one exception was the result of an affair, so the curse had no effect). Then came Penelope, the daughter of the elite and famous Franklin and Jessica Wilhern (Richard E. Grant and Catherine O'Hara). Because they didn't want the press to see her pig-like facial features, the Wilherns faked Penelope's death.
And this leads me back to why she's now having trouble finding a husband; the instant they see Penelope's face, every suitable blue-blooded candidate either runs off or dramatically throws himself out the window. They have to sign a confidentiality agreement before meeting her, one stating that the Wilherns' lawyers won't talk if they don't talk first. The only candidate who didn't sign anything was Edward Vanderman, Jr. (Simon Woods), and this is bad because he immediately runs to the police after seeing Penelope's face and escaping the Wilhern estate. Of course, no one believes what he says (then again, his description of Penelope is grossly exaggerated). But by chance, he meets Lemon (Peter Dinklage), a reporter who had a bad encounter with Jessica when Penelope was born; while he believes Edward's story, he knows that without proof of Penelope's existence, the press would never be willing to print it.
Here enters Max (James McAvoy), a down-on-his-luck musician who spends most of his time competing in underground Poker games. Because Lemon believes him to be from a wealthy family, he persuades Max to pose as a spousal candidate and secretly take pictures of Penelope. After engaging with him through a two-way mirror, she lets him see her face; his knee-jerk reaction convinces her that no one will ever look past her face, despite what her desperate, overbearing mother tells her. She decides to run away from home, not because she hates her family, but because she finally wants see the sights of the city.
A trip to a local bar introduces Penelope to the streetwise Annie (Reese Witherspoon), a character who has no real significance other than to be an extra character. However, it is through her that Penelope's face is publicly exposed, resulting in a whirlwind journey through the world of celebrity. But has Penelope actually made some friends, or are they nothing more than the frenzied fans of a pig-faced freak? Jessica believes it's the latter, which is why she's completely unsupportive of her daughter's newfound fame. All she's concerned with is matching Penelope up with a rich suitor, because the sooner she's married, the sooner the family curse is broken.
Max, meanwhile, realizes that he has feelings for Penelope, pig nose and all. He also realizes how wrong he was to introduce himself under false pretenses and toy with her affections. But now he has to work doubly hard since Edward has reentered Penelope's life. Penelope also has some work to do, especially when it comes to discovering who she really is. Sure, she may find a blue-blooded young man to marry, but will that ultimately have any affect on the curse? Finding Mr. Right is one of the themes of "Penelope," but it's definitely not the main theme--at its core, the film is a self-esteem fable, telling a story that instills age-old ideas about liking yourself even when others are putting you down. I'm surprised this idea hasn't worn itself out since it's been used many, many times before. Then again, theme wasn't that important here. Neither is story, for that matter. I was more interested in the title character as a person, simply because she's a young woman that's strong and vulnerable at the same time. That's the one thing about her more noticeable than the nose on her face.
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