I don’t believe that for a girl as smart as Penelope, she would beg someone she just met to marry her. And that’s what happened here. No wonder the guy ran. And after that it all went downhill for me, even when it started out quite interesting and fairy tale-like.

 

I thought the story development needed work. Especially the part when Penelope ran away from home and months and months just passed by uneventfully, that didn’t make very much sense.

As a fantasy story, there weren’t enough of the fantasy element and hence the movie felt more like in real-life but without the realism of real-life, so it struggled at convincing its own identity.

How James McAvoy’s character slowly lured Penelope out of hiding should have done with greater impact as well as that was the turning point of Penelope’s character. But it passed by without even a touch of romance. And that’s where one of the greatest flaw of the movie laid ; the love between the two characters were never really developed for the audience to experience.

Another flaw was Catherine O’Hara’s as Penelope’s mother. I didn’t see her as a really bad parent at all until something towards the end happened to her. That’s when the storytellers told the audience that we need to label her as a bad mother. Hardly a justifiable punishment for an overprotective parent I thought.

And while we’re on character-flaws, Reese Witherspoon’s character never made the required impact on screen for the audience to register that she was playing a true friend to Penelope as that part of the movie went by too fast, making her character felt quite muddled.

My favourite performance from the movie would have to be Peter Dinklage, though again, a little muddled with his characterisation too. He seemed to be wherever he needed to be just so the movie could move along.

A potentially good movie that had too many flaws, suffering from bad storytelling.

Rating: 5 / 10

(all images from imdb.com)