Not Quite Magic Enough

Penelope is made with the basic ingredients of any modern-day fairytale: one aristocratic girl plagued with issues of insecurity, a number of shallow suitors with ulterior motives, and a Halloween masquerade where the characters can resolve their misunderstandings. The film chronicles the story of a girl who must learn to find solace in a curse that has given her a pig’s snout for a nose from birth. The only way the girl can break the spell is to marry a blue-blooded suitor willing to embrace her pig nose, and accept her for who she is inside.

Penelope Wilhern (Christina Ricci) has been sheltered from exposure and the outside world her entire life. Her mother (Catherine O’Hara) has hired a professional matchmaker to find a qualifying husband for Penelope, but every time an eligible suitor sees Penelope’s snout, he heads straight for the nearest exit. While watching suitors catapult through a second-story window tugs at our schadenfreudal strings, beneath the gag lies the painful reality of the rejection that Penelope experiences after each match-making session. When Penelope discovers that the only suitor (James McAvoy) who returns for a second date might harbor a duplicitous identity, her hopes towards a successful marriage vanish, and her desire to break free from her home and identity escalates.

From there, the story takes place in the fantastical equivalent of modern day New York City with a London edge. The setting echoes the eclectic cast, which seems to save the film from its stale storyline. Christina Ricci’s charming ringlets manage to compensate for the woefully prosthetic snout glued to her face, and James McAvoy’s piercing blue eyes legitimize the incredulity of Mother Wilhern’s match-making agenda. The secondary characters also enliven the story; Reese Witherspoon’s spunky character plays an integral role in helping Penelope adjust to the city, while Peter Dinklage’s stoic one-liners (“Edward, don’t lick Max”) add humor to an otherwise vapid script. Nick Frost (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) also makes an unexpected appearance that highlights the pleasant mix of English and American actors.

Visually, the film falls short of a Pan’s Labyrinth experience, and Penelope’s room in the Wilhern mansion is the only space that manages to make strides towards evoking a Pinocchio workshop-meets-Dali-kind of surrealism. The rest of the rooms, like the other characters, are static and ordinary and lack a touch of mysticism. The music also fails to produce a cradle for an enchanted setting, which underscores the haphazard integration of the fantastic and the modern. The film is a stop-and-start fantasy, one that is irrevocably interrupted when all you can notice are the unnatural crevices separating Penelope’s porcine snout from Ricci’s porcelain face.

--- Yumi Araki, Muse Contributing Writer