Penelope tells the story of a witch’s curse being placed on a family that the first born daughter would be born pig-faced until such time as someone comes to love her for who she is regardless of the face. The curse goes unfulfilled for many generations when every child is born male. This eventually comes to an end in modern days when finally a daughter, Penelope (Christina Ricci) is born complete with a pig snout and ears, although we only ever see the ears on the infant. Penelope’s mother, Jessica (Catherine O’Hara), mortified by her daughter’s appearance and harassed by news reporter/photographer Lemon (Peter Dinklage), fakes Penelope’s death and hides her away from the world. Once Penelope reaches young adulthood, Jessica begins to bring in potential suitors in an attempt to break the curse but each one, upon seeing Penelope’s face, runs away in terror. One such man, Edward (Simon Woods), runs straight to the press where he is branded as a lunatic. But Lemon overhears Edward and the two aline and form a plan to get actual photographic evidence of Penelope to clear both of their reputations.
Lemon hires Max Campion (James McAvoy) to pose as a possible suitor and, using the access this will give him, get a picture of the girl that can be then published in the newspaper. But Max quickly realizes that Penelope is not the monster he was led to believe. Soon he begins to fall in love with her but he has a secret of his own, a secret that he believes would prevent him from being the one that could end her curse.
This is a film aimed at tweens and young teens. As such it doesn’t strive to be more than just a straightforward fairy tale…at first. The first half of this film is played for broad comedy. The mother, Jessica, is a caricature of the shrewish mother whose primary obsession is breaking this curse, not for her daughter’s sake but for what it is doing to her social standing. Her husband, Franklin (Richard E. Grant), tolerates this attitude but appears to go along to get along more than anything else. The comedic tones stretch out to a butler being given bright red running shoes as part of his uniform so that when the potential suitors run in fright he is able to catch them before they can get away and force them to sign a non-disclosure agreement about Penelope, something that should have been done prior to seeing her right from the start. When Edward manages to escape the butler, Jessica goes into full panic mode.
About at the halfway point in the film the tone changes. Max has stopped seeing Penelope, destroyed any film he did take of her, and disappeared. Penelope, hurt by this, runs away from home, hiding her face with the help of a thick scarf. While on her own she befriends a delivery girl named Annie (Reese Witherspoon) who believes the scarf is hiding a slowly healing nose job. Penelope also decides that the best thing to do to get Lemon to finally give up the chase is to give him her picture herself. Upon seeing it, he realizes that she is not the monster he thought she was and begins to feel remorse for what he has done all these years. As a little person he has probably had his fair share of people judging him for his physical appearance and undoubtably this is on his mind as he begins to see her for who she is. The picture also manages to turn the tide on the public’s opinion of her, allowing her to get rid of the scarf and embrace her true self, something she has never been able to do before.
The second half of the movie is where the true emotions of this film exist. While it’s safe to say that the first half does have some poignant moments those moments ramp up in the second half. There are also some surprising reveals in the second half, especially surrounding Max. His story plays out much differently than expected. In a lessor film he would simply realize he loves her only to have her find out what his initial intentions were and break it off with him. They would eventually find each other again and live happily ever after, the curse broken. That would be the expected fairy tale ending. But that’s not what happens here and the film is all the better for it.
James McAvoy is practically perfect in his role as Max. His character initially gets involved to help support his gambling habits but throughout the course of the film he will see a world that is far more beautiful than the one he’s built for himself. He plays both sides of his character to perfection and, even when he’s breaking Penelope’s heart by refusing to marry her and possibly break the curse, we see that this decision is hurting him just as much as it is her. There is a gentleness to him that adds so many more layers to his character than this type of role typically has.
Christina Ricci is also in fine form here having to play the many aspects of a character sheltered her whole life and desperately wanting to get out of the confines of her prison. She wants this, yet on her own terms, refusing to play along with her mother’s rules whenever suitors are brought over, springing her appearance on them suddenly rather than building up to it. Her impatience and frustration with the process causes so much havoc but also builds up the situation that will lead her to Max. When Max refuses to marry her after he realizes he cannot break the curse, her feelings of betrayal radiate on her face, selling just how much pain this moment has inflicted on her. Likewise, when she gets her first feel of the real world and, later, when she’s accepted by the general public, she doesn’t oversell her happiness. There’s some humor associated with trying to do basic things like drink a glass of beer while keeping her scarf in place but most of this part of the film is played relatively straight.
Penelope is a charming film that takes a clichéd concept and has fun with it without forgetting the real world realities such as situation would invoke. It’s not afraid to look past the surface and examine the implications of being overly sheltered by an overbearing mother but doesn’t shy away from having some fun with the concept, too. This makes Penelope a fun, if not entirely groundbreaking, little film that should hit home for its intended audience while also managing to slip in messages about self-worth and humility. It’s breezy but not fleeting, and just overall tells a good story that the whole family can get behind. It may have failed at the global box-office but it is well worth seeking out anyway. Money, after all, doesn’t equal quality.
Release Date: February 29, 2008
Running Time: 89 Minutes
Rated PG
Starring: Christina Ricci, James McAvoy, Catherine O’Hara, Peter Dinklage, Richard E. Grant and Reese Witherspoon
Directed By: Mark Palansky
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