Beauty and the Beastly - Movie Reviews

I wrote this a couple weeks ago, but got .... er... side-tracked, and didn't post it right away....

I may have just watched the worst movie ever allowed to be made. Ever made. Ever. And... I have watched some horrible movies in my time, most of which were foreign (asian), dubbed, kung-fu, martial arts movies that for some reason I thought would be saved by their amazing fight sequences, but... sadly were not. Nothing and I mean nothing could save the movie I watched this night. I'm not even going to check to see what year it was made. Suffice it to say it was "Beauty and the Beast", and it was absolutely ghastly. Sometimes you will come across movies with unknown actors that end up being gems, but this was not the case here. Dumb, dumber, dumbest choice ever. It was like a poorly made tv show. Quite a few years ago there was a tv series called Beauty and the Beast with Ron Perlman as the beast and that tv series puts this new movie to shame. Please do not go and rent this movie just to see how bad it is.... seriously. I mean it....

Luckly, it was a non-eventful Friday night, so I had rented two movies, and I watched that one first. The second one was "Young Victoria" which I ... can I say this? I loved it. It is beautiful, starting with the story itself, the budding romance between the Young Victoria (Emily Blunt) and Albert (Rupert Friend), the writing (Julian Fellowes who also wrote Gosford Park), the casting and acting (Mark Strong (bad-ass), Miranda Richardson, Paul Bettany, Jim Broadbent, Thomas Kretschmann (a fave from years ago... before he appeared in "The Pianist"), set design and costumes.... Oh... and the score, using varying themes upon Schubert's "Serenade", one of the pieces that I remember learning to play as a kid, and liking it... And yes, there is probably more to the Title of that particular "song", but that is what I remember it as. This is not an artsy, fartsy, stilted, stodgy period piece that drags on and on... it is an honest to goodness romance between two young people amidst the political machinations of many. I found the exchanging of letters between the two to be particulary endearing, as well as the very few and brief scenes involving Albert and his brother Ernst. Hey... like I said in my previous movie review, I've gone soft.