YMMV / Beastly

• 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.
• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • Mostly due to the film having Kyle turn into a Gorgeous Gorgon, Kendra's spell could have turned him into what he would consider an ugly form - especially as he's a rather superficial teenager.
  • The end of the film has Kendra about to cast the same curse on Kyle's father. Laser-Guided Karma? Or her way of trying to mend the bond between father and son.
• Anvilicious:
  • The film isn't exactly subtle on the inner beauty Aesop. Kyle's election speech spells it out that he's a shallow, looks-obsessed jerk who's going to get Laser-Guided Karma.
  • It's really hammered home that Kyle's dad is a workaholic with no time for him in the first ten minutes.
• Broken Base: The change in Kyle's appearance from the book to the movie. In the book, he becomes a literal beast. Whereas in the film he just becomes bald, tattooed and scarred. See Hollywood Homely below for the argument as to why this doesn't work, whereas others feel that having him furry would have resulted in Narm.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Will for being played by Neil Patrick Harris and getting a lot of great lines.
• Fans Prefer the New Her: Big time. A lot of people think Alex Pettyfer looks better as a tattooed punk as opposed to the Pretty Boy he is at the start of the film. This is despite the fact that the transformation was incredibly traumatic for Kyle.
• First Installment Wins: The books (Beastly is the first of a series) seem to be better received than the movie. In terms of the book series itself, Beastly seems to be much better known than the other fairy tale re-tellings.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Because of the varying mileage of his looks, it would be entirely possible for a girl to find the new look more attractive than his normal one. But the moment she professes her love to him, he turns back into his old unattractive self.
  • Mary-Kate Olsen plays a witch. Four years later, her sister would play one in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
• Hollywood Homely:
  • In the film, Kyle doesn't turn into a beast, just a guy who looks like the frontman for a metal band. Penny Arcade, naturally, was all over this. Also, this is a guy who lives in New York; people are more likely to ask him where he got the cool tats than to point and laugh. The only thing really stopping him going outside is his own issues over his looks — oh. OH.
  • Kendra is considered ugly by the other students, despite looking like this◊. So they shaved off Mary-Kate's eyebrows? The horror.
• Jerkass Woobie: Kyle is a spoiled brat who's also the most superficial person imaginable. The woobie part comes to the forefront once his dad stops coming by. It's soon made clear how lonely he actually is.
• Tear Jerker: In the book, there's a couple to choose from.
  • Once he's relocated into a different house, Kyle comes to the realization that his own father hates him, to the point where he doesn't want his own (now beastly) son in the same house as him.
  • Magda's backstory about how she came to America to earn money, so her family could get their green cards. Unfortunately, she has worked for years with nothing to show for it.
  • In the book, after Linda leaves to see her sick father, Kyle's attempts to be cheery (especially while reading Les Misérables) comes across as a case of Stepford Smiler. Even Will can see past this.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Pretty much no one was pleased with the film's decision to make Kyle's beast form a bald guy with tattoos and piercings rather than the traditional, animalistic beast he was in the book.
• Took the Bad Film Seriously: The film is clearly a Paranormal Romance designed to replicate The Twilight Saga, but Vanessa Hudgens turns in a very sweet performance as Lindy and makes the romance believable.
• The Woobie:
  • Magda and her film counterpart Zola, who is arguably even more so since she's not Kendra in disguise. She can't see her children at all and must work in the US to provide for them. Her situation is what prompts Kyle to give a damn about someone other than himself.
  • Lindy, who spends her time taking care of her rather useless father, while also being looked down on at the school.

---