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Film: Penelope

3/51 February What I like about Penelope is the one-eyed midget. It’s a mark of the film’s charm, and central to its message, that his height never carries a joke; not once is he reduced to such a crude stereotype, defined by his physical quirks. No, the character of Lemon (Peter Dinklage) is rounded and, like the movie (for the most part), genuinely engaging.
Penelope is a modern fairytale starring Christina Ricci as a young woman born with the snout of a pig. Her parents are desperately trying to marry her off in order to break the curse. One of the suitors, slimy inheritor Edward Vanderman, forms a secret alliance with a reporter, Lemon, in order to expose Penelope’s face to the world. Together they hire loveable rascal Max (James MacAvoy) to infiltrate the Wilhern household – but he develops a friendship with the mark; things become complicated.
Being a fairytale, there’s a strange mangling of context; the film takes place in a mid-Atlantic nowhereland that’s half London, half Manhattan, modern cars but mechanical typewriters. And, being a fairytale, the plot is mainly predictable; true love blossoms, falters, is triumphant.
Yet the telling is consistently witty, and Leslie Caveny’s script embellishes the story with a zest that keeps the viewer grinning widely and may even make it possible to stomach the inevitable ‘be happy with yourself’ message. The film is crisp, bright and lucid; Reese Witherspoon’s courier and Jason Thornton’s amiable bartender make impressions despite little screen-time. And Dinklage carries it: asked exactly why he’s so obsessed with getting his story, Lemon, straight-faced, diagnoses his own motivation in wilfully surreal tell-don’t-show fashion.
The cast sometimes seems unpleasantly polarised along racial lines: the Yanks are likeable, the English callous toffs. But despite some vaguely untenable American accents from the British roster, Ricci and MacEvoy are both excellent. The third act is rather messy, the tone sometimes confused, but criticism be damned: Penelope may not be a great film but it’s charming enough to get away with it, and isn’t that nice?by Laurence Dodds

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