Snout of the Closet

[February 27th, 2008]

Even as our society tells young women to look like Britney and Lindsay—in hopes, presumably, that they can grow up to enter rehab and pose for ghoulish photos—a countercurrent of movies are busy encouraging girls to love themselves exactly as they are. I may not be the best judge of how well these messages work, but I’m guessing they’re a trifle self-defeating, since they so often equate being “unique” with looking grotesque. However many girls may claim to embrace Princess Fiona from Shrek as a role model, I doubt that many of them are instilled with a dream to look like a troll. If they’re quick studies, they may begin to suspect that “inner beauty” is the compensation prize awarded by pretty people to those with green skin and halitosis.

And now here is Penelope, a well-meaning movie produced by Reese Witherspoon—a woman whose self-esteem should be in excellent heath—that tells young ladies: Don’t worry, people will still like you even if you have a pig snout for a nose. No, really, that’s the plot: Thanks to a witch’s curse, Penelope Wilhern is a porker, and she’ll stay one until somebody falls in love with her. (Not to give too much away, but that somebody might be herself.) As ideas for female-empowerment pictures go, this is only slightly better than the one about the vagina with the teeth. It helps a little that Penelope is played by Christina Ricci, who even with a pig snout is easier on the eyes than most people who don’t have pig snouts. It doesn’t help at all that the first hour of the movie is filled with potential suitors getting one look at Penelope and jumping out of plate-glass windows. Her disfigurement, it seems, is somewhat difficult to overlook. So is the movie’s condescension.

The repulsed boys are all pedigreed WASPs, for reasons supposedly related to the rules of the family hex but actually having more to do with screenwriter Leslie Caveny getting in her punches at aristocratic prigs. (One of the characters is named Edward Humphrey Vanderman Jr., which tells you everything you need to know about him.) They’ve been recruited by Penelope’s mother, Jessica Wilhern (Catherine O’Hara), who is the worst human being that ever lived. Well, OK, maybe not worse than Stalin, or Pol Pot—but then Stalin and Pol Pot didn’t fake their daughters’ deaths and keep them locked up, reminding them constantly how ugly they were. Catherine O’Hara is a fine comedienne, but she may be a bit too convincing in this role; Mrs. Wilhern is like Piper Laurie in Carrie without any excuse of religion, and it’s a relief when she gets off the screen, and Penelope leaves her room to face the world.

From there, the movie has its compensations. Ricci has been choosing eccentric projects for so long now (dating a high-functioning mentally disabled man in Pumpkin, dating a lesbian serial killer in Monster, dating a radiator in Black Snake Moan) that she no longer seems to notice when anything is out of the ordinary; her unperturbed manner offsets much of the more strained, fantastical elements of the story. Mark Palansky’s direction, combined with Bridget Menzies’ candy-colored London sets, brings to mind Tim Burton on a heavy dose of Wellbutrin—it’s fanciful but very cozy, all the way down to the purple-and-green scarf Penelope uses to hide her nose. James McAvoy is his standard, amiable self as the male romantic lead, while Peter Dinklage (sporting a mustache that makes him look like a miniature Josh Brolin) contributes his standard, magnetic performance as a snooping tabloid reporter.

Yes, there are paparazzi in Penelope. It’s that kind of knowing, winking fairy tale. It even knows what its problems are: In the movie’s epilogue, when Ricci asks a group of children to tell her the moral of the story, one kid pipes up, “Rich people suck.” Another tyke adds, “It’s always your mother’s fault.” Caverny and Palansky are aware exactly where their project falters, but haven’t bothered to make it any better. So they’ve ended up with a candy-covered movie with an ugly center: the story of an abused girl who is shunned until she learns to love herself, at which time all her problems magically disappear. Maybe Penelope’s sufferings are her mother’s fault. But the movie has only itself to blame for its blemishes.