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PENELOPE Send This Review to a Friend
In “Penelope,” directed by Mark Palanski from a lame screenplay by Leslie Caveny, Christina Ricci plays an afflicted young woman from a wealthy London family. Penelope suffers from a family curse that has given her from birth a pig’s snout that could seek out truffles. In this intended modern fairy tale, supposedly only love with a prince charming can break the curse. For Penelope, the lessons to be learned are that beauty is what’s inside and that believing in oneself is the key to happiness.
This somewhat feminist fable gets to be absurd rather than charming despite the efforts of a competent cast. In addition to the ever-adorable Ricci, prosthetic snout notwithstanding, James McAvoy (“Atonement”) turns up as one who eventually sees the true Penelope in contrast to the louts put off by the Miss Piggy nose. Catherine O’Hara is the mother so ashamed of her daughter that she hides her as best she can. Peter Dinklage plays a scheming journalist, and Reese Witherspoon has a small role befriending Penelope.
I won’t bore you with the ins and outs of the complicated plot along the road to a less usual fairy tale ending. The film may have a nose for values and a heart in the right place, but it is basically inane. A Summit Entertainment release.
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