Penelope

NEW YORK (CNS) -- Despite a few structural deficiencies, "Penelope" (Summit Entertainment) is overall a likeable romantic fairy tale that offers some valuable moral observations.

As the result of an ancestral curse, Penelope Wilhern (charmingly spunky Christina Ricci), an otherwise beautiful London heiress, was born with a pig's snout. Unable to find a cure, her domineering mother, Jessica (Catherine O'Hara), and diffident father, Franklin (Richard E. Grant), instead faked her early death to protect her from the paparazzi, and then raised her in comfortable isolation.

Since coming of age, Penelope, at Jessica's insistence, has been striving for the one remaining solution. According to the hex's terms, if she can get someone "of her own kind" to love her, the spell will be lifted.

The outcome, however, has been all too predictable. A succession of eligible, aristocratic young men have trooped to the Wilhern townhouse, taken a gander and fled. Restrained before they can escape the grounds, they are bribed into signing a nondisclosure agreement.

When upper-class twit Edward Vanderman Jr. (Simon Woods) gets away without signing, he goes to the nearest police station to report what he has seen. Mocked as a lunatic, he finds only one person willing to believe his story: a shady tabloid reporter named Lemon (Peter Dinklage) who once tried to photograph Penelope as a baby.

Edward and Lemon join forces and enlist the help of well-born but down-at-the-heels compulsive gambler Max Campion (James McAvoy), paying him to pose as a suitor in order to get a clandestine snapshot proving Edward's tale. Instead, of course, he gradually falls in love with Penelope, who converses with him through a one-way mirror and is equally smitten.

When Penelope finally reveals herself, Max's reaction is not what she had been hoping for, and the disappointment drives her to leave home, her lower face covered in a scarf. Welcomed at a pub Max had once praised, she is befriended by tough, talkative messenger Annie (Reese Witherspoon, co-producer of the film). As these two explore the city on Annie's Vespa, Penelope's parents are in hot pursuit. So too is Lemon.

Director Mark Palansky's film establishes its fanciful premise quite successfully and becomes an adept satire of contemporary society's obsession with skin-deep beauty as well as the eccentric nature of modern celebrity. The script also emphasizes the need for loving self-acceptance.

But the movie's plot lags in places and the necessary groundwork for a convincing central relationship between the two appealing leads is never really completed. "Penelope" is not quite the truffle it might have been.

The film contains occasional crass language and innuendo, and fleeting suicide and adultery references. The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is A-II -- adults and adolescents. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG -- parental guidance suggested. Some material may not be suitable for children.

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Copyright (c) 2007 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops