I’m calling it the “Vonnegut
Rule.” Anytime a teen drama needs to quickly illustrate its hero is a cool-sensitive
outsider, he will be seen reading Vonnegut. Always “Slaughter House Five.” We
get that scene moments into “Beautiful Creatures,” another YA adaptation about
teens amongst supernatural angst and humanity-ending danger. Our reader is
Ethan Wate (Alden Ehrenreich), a high schooler with a DOA mom and MIA dad who
falls for the new girl (Alice Englert) in class, because she’s witchy, and
has, in fact, invaded Ethan’s dreams for months: Violent memories not his own.
I know nothing of the books. But writer/director Richard LaGravenese’s movie peaks
midway with a family dining room table fight that literally sends table and
room spinning as one silent cousin sits, eating. (Why can’t the film be about
him?) The remainder is blasé and anticlimactic, with part of the cast –- Emma
Thompson -– camping it up “Batman” TV style, and the rest –- Ehrenreich
and Englert –- crying over doomed love, all of them wrestling Southern accents
that come and go, often in a single scene. Read some Vonnegut instead, eh? C
Lean on Pete
6 years ago
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