BOTTOM LINE: Shamefully woeful, this quasi-modern fairy tale has a talented cast but the film itself is embarrassing to watch as it stumbles from one ridiculous point to the next, and never really creating the fantasy world this type of story requires.

THE GOOD: “Penelope” has one saving grace in that it is a fairy tale that has its own unique twist on it. A curse is placed on the rich Wilhern family whereby the first daughter born following the placement of the curse will have the face of a pig. Out comes Penelope (Christina Ricci), the girl who really only has a pig nose, but in reality is quite normal in every way, except for the fact that she is extremely sheltered. The curse can only be broken by marrying one of her own kind (which her mother interprets to be a ‘blue blood’), but potential suitors always run for the hills at the first sight of Penelope. Enter Johnny Martin (James McAvoy), who through chance passes himself off as a blue blood and manages to be the first man to run at the sight of Penelope. They click but as you would expect, nothing is smooth sailing, which leads Penelope on an adventure to break free of the confines of her sheltered life. The film as a fairy tale is intriguing in concept. The cast makes a valiant attempt to believe what is happening, particularly James McAvoy who almost comes across as three dimensional, despite the fact he has nothing to work with.

THE BAD: Just about everything, except for the valiant attempts from the cast to be sincere, is woeful. This film would probably have been better off as an animated flick for kids, but as a live action film, there are absolutely no elements within it that sustain the fantasy aspects of the story, which are crucial given it’s a fairy tale. It feels like a real world film with fantasy elements badly tacked on, and even the real world feel is not that believable. Penelope’s nose is just a bad make-up job, without much imagination. The handling of Penelope’s parents in the story, particularly the mother is just plain awful, and especially in the end when you think the mother has learned something from the entire charade but has not. The direction and narrative plods along in an uninspired fashion to its predictable conclusion; and it’s clunky and poorly conceived, doing nothing to generate suspension of disbelief. Nothing about what we see here would make you care, or even laugh at. It is hard not to see this film as anything other than a favour to Reese Witherspoon who is the sole producer. It is a pretty poor effort to say the least.