Penelope: Movie Review (2008)

Directed by Mark Palansky, written by Leslie Caveny, rated PG, 90 minutes.

Mark Palansky’s “Penelope” is the movie in which Christina Ricci is saddled with the face of a pig. More specifically, the wrinkled snout and little floppy ears of a pig.

But don’t cry for Penelope just yet.

While everything else about her face suggests something of a pig hybrid, Ricci’s Penelope appears just human enough to see how beautiful Penelope would look if her wealthy family hadn’t been cursed by a witch so long ago. The good news? That curse can be lifted, though it’s going to be a struggle.

Written by Leslie Caveny, this uneven yet affable fairy tale does a few key things right, starting with getting Ricci back onto the screen in a starring role.

Audiences will see a lot more of her in the upcoming “Speed Racer” movie, which already has the fan boys buzzing and which might restart her career in a big way. But right now, in this much smaller movie, it’s swell to be reminded of how special Ricci is and how necessary it is to have her working. As any fan of “The Opposite of Sex,” “The Ice Storm,” “Pecker,” “Anything Else” and “Monster” knows, there are few others who can tap into the quirky absurd like Christina Ricci.

She’s also one of the very few people who could have played this role well, which is more difficult to pull off than it appears. To succeed, Ricci had to put on a snout every morning, face her part-pig face, and play the part straight, even while so many around her were setting the screen afire with camp.

Chief among those culprits is Catherine O’Hara as Penelope’s well-coiffed, well-meaning yet damaging mother Jessica, who is so personally humiliated by Penelope’s physical appearance, she unwittingly has harmed her daughter’s self-esteem by pushing so hard for her to break the curse. To do so, it’s imperative that Penelope meet a suitor of similar class who is willing to marry her. Trouble is, that’s proving difficult to do, especially since every man who lays eyes on her ends up throwing himself out a window.

Not so for James McAvoy’s Max, a shady gambler who initially is hired by tabloid journalist Lemon (Peter Dinklage) to trick Penelope into having a photo snapped of her face, but who nevertheless comes to feel something for her that is real and meaningful.

Too bad he blows it--and when he does, wounded Penelope decides she’s had enough. Wrapping a scarf around her face, she sets out for the first time into the outside world (in this case, London), where she comes upon a whole host of characters, including sketchy Annie, who is played with brassy slyness by one of the film’s producers, Reese Witherspoon.

Not all goes well in “Penelope.” The uneven use of accents is distracting (at the very least, shouldn’t the English-born Penelope and her mother have English accents and not American accents?), McAvoy is a greasy disconnect and the plot is a predictable, straight shot to the end.

But plenty does go well here. As you’d expect, O’Hara is a hammy, chaos-creating treat, Witherspoon is likable in a small role, and then there’s Ricci, on whom so much of the movie rests. If it didn’t sound condescending, it would be nice to say to her, “That’ll do, pig. That’ll do.” But you get the point.

In this movie, she reminds us why she matters, and why it would be nice to have more of her, please.

Grade: B-