Beastly - Television Tropes & Idioms

And white is for true love...

Beastly is a 2007 Young Adult novel written by Alex Flinn. It's a modern retelling of Beauty and the Beast, set in New York.

Kyle Kingsbury, rich, handsome and popular, plays a mean practical joke on an outcast girl in his class, who is really a witch named Kendra in disguise. The witch then curses him for his cruelty. He turns into a beast; however, because he performed a small act of kindness shortly before his transformation when he gave an unwanted rose corsage to a girl working a ticket booth, she gives him two years to break the spell, or remain a beast forever. The only way he can turn back to normal is if he truly loves a girl and gets her to love him in return, proving the love with a kiss. Kendra later offers Kyle further aid by giving him a magic mirror that shows him whomever he wishes to see. He is locked in a mansion-like apartment by his shallow, image-obsessed father. His only company is his housekeeper, Magda, and, at his request, a blind tutor named Will.

After a year of being in this state, and trying and failing to find love, Kyle changes his name to Adrian to reflect his feelings of being a completely different person from the conceited, materialistic boy he used to be. When a robber stumbles into his garden Adrian offers him a deal; he won't report the robber to the police if the robber brings Adrian his daughter, Linda. She is Adrian's last chance to break the spell before his two years are up.

The movie was released March 18th, 2011; instead of Kyle being turned into an inhuman beast, in this version, he' turns into a "human monster" — a huge, ugly punk covered in tattoos, piercings, and scars. It was received poorly by critics, having only a 21% on Rotten Tomatoes, and a 41 out of 100 rating on metacritic.

This book provides examples of:

Animorphism
Beast and Beauty: Well, duh.
The Beautiful Elite: Kyle used to belong to them before the curse; he even uses the actual phrase "the Beautiful People".
Bookworm: Lindy.
Curse
Curse Escape Clause: Kyle's spell can only be broken if he falls in love with a girl and gets her to return the love within two years of his transformation, or else he'll be stuck as a beast forever.
Earn Your Happy Ending
Flower Motifs: The meanings of different roses are brought up at various points in the book, and Kyle plants a specific kind of miniature called "Little Linda" in honor of Linda's arrival.
For Halloween, I Am Going as Myself: This ends badly for Kyle when the girl he's dancing with tries to pull off his "mask".
Heroes Want Redheads: Especially when she lets her hair down.
Heroic BSOD: Adrian, after he lets Lindy go off to help her father.
I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Why Adrian lets Lindy leave in the first place.
Jerkass: Kyle, at first.
Karma Houdini: Kyle's father is just as narcissistic as his son, with less excuse. In fact, he's arguably the cause of Kyle's cruelty. But nothing happens to him. Kendra should have gone after the father once she'd straightened out the son.
- Given how he was in the public eye so much, she probably couldn't have gone after him. She already was banished from ever going home for cursing Kyle.
King Incognito: Magda, Kyle's seemingly Hispanic caretaker, is revealed at the end to be none other than Kendra in disguise.
- Kyle himself is this for Lindy, who had a crush on him when he was human and who has no idea that he's her friend "Adrian".
Meaningful Name: Kyle starts calling himself Adrian after his transformation, a name which means "dark one", as he decides that "Kyle", which means "handsome", doesn't suit him anymore. In reality, Adrian is a Latin-derived name that simply means "man from the town of Hadria" and Kyle comes from a Gaelic word which means "channel" or "strait", but the inaccuracies can be Hand Waved by the reasoning that Kyle looked them up on the Internet which is not a 100% reliable source. Linda is also the Spanish word for pretty.
Parental Abandonment: Kyle's father never paid much attention to him even before the curse, and Lindy's father is a drug user who gives her up to what he believes is imprisonment in a beast's dungeon. This is one of the things they bond over, really.
Rage Against The Reflection
Shallow Love Interest: Sloane, although it's less about her not having a personality than her personality being genuinely shallow and her interest in Kyle based solely on him being handsome and popular, which is why Kyle trying to kiss her to break his curse fails.
She Cleans Up Nicely: Lindy, after trying on the dress she and Adrian find in the attic.
Shout Out: Lots of stories inspired by the original fairytale, like The Phantom of the Opera, Jane Eyre and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
- There are also several references to other fairy tales as Kyle chats with more modern people living them, such as "The Little Mermaid", "The Frog Prince", and "Snow-White and Rose-Red".
Snow Means Love
Title Drop: Kyle begins the story by saying he'll tell the reader how he "became... beastly."
True Beauty Is On The Inside
True Love's Kiss

The Film of the Book provides examples of:

Adaptation Decay: The film removes the peril at the end of the novel, where "Adrian" is shot by Lindy's would-be assailant. He transforms back to his human state after she kisses him and tells him she loves him before heading off on a trip to Machu Picchu. Also, the whole Madga (renamed Zola)-is-Kendra thing is taken out.
- The alternate ending is the same as the book's ending.
Adaptational Attractiveness: The "beast"◊ just looks like a really hardcore punk kid who's been in a fight, which to a modern audience is arguably a lot sexier than his pretty boy form.
- And he gets to keep his six-pack abs, too.
- He's going to tell girls he got these scars racing motorbikes in an active volcano. How will she ever bring herself to love this dark prince?"
Adorkable: Lindy, particularly when she is listening to her headphones while walking down the street, starts singing out loud, and claps her hands over her mouth as soon as she realizes what she's doing.
Avoid The Dreaded G-Rating: Everything that qualified this as PG-13 (the words "slut" and "bullshit," 30 seconds of violence, and a couple of drug references) could have been easily removed or slightly altered down to PG without affecting the story.
Calling the Old Man Out: Hunter leaves a message telling his father not to pretend to care anymore after one too many canceled plans via text message. Lindy does this too when she points out her father is leaving her with a total stranger and that he basically sucks as a parent.
Chick Flick: Lampshaded by Will when he pokes fun at Hunter's decidedly un-macho plan for building a rose garden greenhouse as a romantic gesture.
Clark Kenting: Handwaved due to Kyle and Lindy having only briefly spoken twice before his curse (despite her crushing on him). She makes sure to mention both times that they hadn't met or talked in the previous three years so it's clearly spelled out for the audience.
Dueling Movies: Deliberately averted by the producers. Beastly was originally scheduled to be released in 2010 around the same time as Charlie St. Cloud, but since Vanessa Hudgens and Zac Efron were still dating, Beastly was moved up to avoid competition between the then-couple. In hindsight, this might have been a moot point, as neither movie appear to have been very successful.
Feigning Intelligence: Invoked by Kyle. He tries to get lesson plan answers in advance to sound smart and impress Lindy, and confesses to Will that he looks up modern poetry to pick up girls. To his initial dismay, he accidentally selects one of Lindy's favorites.
Follow the Leader: It certainly has a few intentional stylistic elements in common with Twilight.
Freudian Excuse: Kyle's viewpoints and poor treatment of others directly mirror his father's, and it's implied he spent his entire childhood being ignored by him.
Karma Houdini: Rob Kingsbury treats his son like garbage the whole film, and it appears his only comeuppance is a hurt voice message from Kyle, until the very end when the trope is subverted: Kendra pays him a little visit as his new assistant. Cue credits. Subverted when Lindy's father overdoses on drugs but played straight when he survives.
Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Kyle is trying to explain to Lindy what happened to him, and in doing so basically describes the plot of Beauty and the Beast.
Lindy: Everyone knows that story.
Missing Trailer Scene: Blink-and-you'll-miss-em clips of Lindy hanging on Hunter and him giving her a piggy-back ride, him standing on top of the Manhattan Bridge, Hunter running through a park, Kyle rubbing Lindy's lips with his thumb, Hunter catching Lindy as she jumps off a wall, and Lindy telling Hunter he's the most beautiful man she's ever met (the angle and the fact that she's crying suggests it might have been the scene from the book where he gets shot).
Mysterious Protector
Neil Patrick Harris: Will, in the movie.
Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Alex Pettyfer, kind of a lot.
"The Reason You Suck" Speech: Surprisingly, this is Kyle's campaign speech... to the people voting for him. And then they still elect him.
Shallow Love Interest: Sloane, again. After Kyle disappears, she immediately goes out with his wing-man. However, it's heavily implied she knew this when she is heard confessing she didn't like herself while dating Kyle and felt like she had to pretend to be someone else.
Shout Out: To the Disney version. Kyle's "servants" have their own "curses" lifted when Zola's children are given green cards and Will regains his sight.
Stalker with a Crush: Hunter. Despite the fact that he mysteriously presents Lindy with several boxes of her favorite candy, Jujyfruits, she never calls him out on it.
Tall, Dark and Handsome