Penelope

Penelope

Directed by Mark Palansky (PG)

A young heiress cursed with a pig nose learns to love herself.

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For his directorial debut, Mark Palansky dusts off a timeworn message about inner beauty, said David Germain in the Associated Press. But he hits one on the nose in this “original and unassuming” modern-day fairy tale about a girl born with a sow’s snout. Played by Christina Ricci, Penelope is the victim of a family curse that can only be reversed when she wins the love of “one of her kind.” Palansky cleverly twists the morals behind Beauty and the Beast and The Ugly Duckling and casts a spell with richly imagined cinematography. But looks can be deceiving, said Michael Phillips in the Chicago Tribune. In an attempt to visually seduce us, Palansky piles on special effects instead of developing the plot. What’s left is a film that is “outsized, hyperbolic, and Tim Burton-y.” A thin story line is Penelope’s “real curse,” said Joe Morgenstern in The Wall Street Journal. Built around a flimsy concept, the film was likely “in a trough of trouble before the oink on the script was dry.”