Penelope

Penelope is a modern fairy-tale told in a sub-Barry-Sonnenfeld manner. If Tim Burton's the style with the throttle wide open, Barry Sonnenfeld around the middle (his Addams Family era) and Brad Silberling's Lemony Snicket flick at the soft end, then Penelope is definitely Sonnenfeld-Lite.

Shot entirely in the UK from a Pinewood base, the entire supporting cast is British and littered with a lot of familiar faces including Ronnie Ancona, Lenny Henry and Nick Frost. Keeping the audience off-balance, most of the cast speak with an American accent which depressingly isn't a subtle dig at US cultural shallowness about appearance, because the only person with a real problem about Penelope's appearance is very obviously British.

This is the story of Penelope Wilhern, a lovely young woman who had the misfortune to be born the first female Wilhern in a couple of hundred years. The story starts with Penelope's voiceover informing us that over a hundred years ago, one of her ancestors got a serving girl up the duff and rather than doing the honourable thing let the poor girl throw herself off a cliff. In retaliation, the girl's mother (the town witch) placed a spell on the Wilhern family that the next-born girl in the family would be born with the face of a pig. Subsequent Wilhern brides lived in fear of producing a porcine offspring, until a girl was born who turned out perfectly normal. Unfortunately, it failed to emerge that the child was the product of a liaison with the chauffeur and wasn't a Wilhern after all.


This is where Penelope comes in. Christina Ricci plays Penelope. She actually looks cuter than usual with a snout, which is kind of odd. The makeup is extremely conservative - I've seen many a more unsightly shnoz in my time, frankly and again in a slightly weird kind of way, Ms Ricci's face seems better balanced with a wider conk than that which nature provided her with.

Penelope lives an ivory tower existence in a nice playroom with a swing and various interesting things in glass domes (see what I mean about a Barry Sonnenfeld feel?) Her life is naturally sheltered and unworldly, with her mother Jessica (Catherine O'Hara) protecting her at all costs to the extent of faking Penelope's death to shake off the press pack.


Of all the characters in the film other than the official villain of the piece, only Penelope's mother played by Catherine O'Hara, is a problem. And what a pain in the arse that woman is. We know she loves Penelope, but she's smothering, appearance-obsessed and quite manic. Prone to fainting and bossing everybody about, it is she who attacks journalist Lemon (Peter Dinklage), costing him an eye.

When Penelope comes of a certain age, her parents hire Wanda (Ronnie Ancona) start casting around the nation's blue-blooded eligible bachelors in the belief that something like true love's kiss will break the witch's curse. And what a pack of inbred, chinless wonders they are. All of them - to a "man" - bolt the moment poor Penelope puts her head round the door. Most of them defenestrate themselves (throw themselves out of the window) to get away. Normally they are intercepted by Jake the butler (Michael Feast) and forced to sign a legal gagging or nondisclosure contract, but one unfortunate day the would-be suitor gets away.


Edward Humphrey Vanderman III is played by Simon Woods, and has to be the most pathetic individual committed to celluloid. All Penelope says to him is "Hi," and he's convinced she would have eaten him alive if he hadn't escaped. For the intents and purposes of the movie, he is the villain of the piece, and he's not even very good at that. Simon Woods' comedy turn as Edward admittedly does grate slightly - you just want to slap the t*sser, quite frankly - but that's exactly what you need so that at a later point in the plot you can grab tufts of your hair and wail "Nooooo!" in exasperation.


Peter Dinklage as Lemon, the obsessed, one-eyed journalist who pursues Penelope and her family is an incredible piece of casting. While James McAvoy is the romantic interest in the picture, Dinklage's Lemon is the prime mover in much of the action. It is purely incidental that Lemon is a Person Of Diminutive Stature. Most movies would simply cast him as the Sinister One-Eyed Dwarf, but in this picture his character drives the action - organising the campaign with Vanderman to expose Penelope to the world, finding Max/Johnny as his agent provocateur and ultimately revealing Penelope to the world, although the world's reaction is not what he and Vanderman were expecting.


James McAvoy plays Max Campion/ Johnny, the down-on-his-luck gambler that Lemon employs to get into the Wilhern house to get covert pictures of Penelope. When he doesn't bolt when Penelope makes an appearance (he's on the floor behind the settee at the time), he gets the opportunity to talk one-to-one with Penelope through the one-way mirror set up so that she can chat with prospective suitors. A romance blossoms, but even he as the romantic lead isn't enough of a man to not be initially thrown by Penelope's appearance.


This sets the stage for Penelope's escape into the wider world…

The movie is Reece Witherspoon's first as a producer, and while she should be very proud of the finished result, it's obvious the Studio suits weren't as the movie has languished on a shelf for two years waiting for a release. It snuck out into theatres as recently as February. It's also the feature directorial debut of Mark Palansky.

Witherspoon makes a cameo appearance as Vespa-riding messenger Annie, who becomes Penelope's best pal in the wider world. Shots of Witherspoon driving the scooter are done with stage-hands pulling the bike as the actress's legs were too short to reach the floor of the two-wheeler.

If I have one problem with Penelope, it's in that it shares a title with another movie I'm very fond of - the 1969 MGM movie of the same name starring Natalie Wood as a bored banker's wife who takes to a major crime spree to alleviate said boredom. Also starring Ian Bannen, Dick Shawn and Peter Falk, it shows up from time to time on TCM and I'd love to see that get a proper release.

However, I was completely and utterly enchanted by this Penelope. To the extent I've watched it through twice for the review and I intend to watch it again for personal entertainment - and that's not something I do a lot for review movies, believe me. The movie never once loses its footing and lurches into sentimentality which would be only too easy. Of the movies I've seen so far this year, I'd put it up alongside my other favourites Enchanted and Stardust as a top notch fairytale movie.

Video
Presented in 2.35:1 Anamorphic Widescreen, the image is just beautiful - top points to Michel Amathieu for his wonderful cinematography, and ditto to Momentum for an excellent authoring job.

Audio
Dolby Digital 5.1. The movie may be slightly dated by the inclusion of a number of contemporary pop tunes in the soundtrack, specifically Hoppipolla which is used at the back end of the movie and in the trailer.

Extras
There's a trailer and a short making-of documentary, photo gallery and DVD-ROM content.