'Beautiful Creatures' plays its supernatural story too straight
Now that the 鈥�Twilight鈥� series has run its course (at least I ever-so-fervently hope so), Hollywood is ripe for variations on a theme. Into the fray rushes 鈥淏eautiful Creatures,鈥� based on the Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl bestseller and starring a lot of A-list actors, including Jeremy Irons and Emma Thompson, who vamp about looking dreary and desiccated.
Essentially it鈥檚 a young love Gothic involving a teen witch (Alice Englert, pretty good) and the happy-go-lucky high school misfit (Alden Ehrenreich) who falls for her. Writer-director Richard LaGravanese (he wrote 鈥�The Fisher King鈥�) is too smart for this sort of thing, so he outsmarts himself by playing everything too straight. (Mustn鈥檛 mess up the franchise.) A dash 鈥� only a dash 鈥� of Tim Burton ghoulishness might have helped. Grade: C+ (Rated PG-13 for violence, scary images and some sexual material.)
