What if "nice" really was good enough?


When I was a child, I loved Shelly Duvall’s Faerie Tale Theatre – in fact, I still do. I have a handful of episodes spread out over VHS and DVD and I have yet to outgrown their charm. And they are charming – they had to be in order to attract some of the biggest directors and actors of the eighties. Most people who remember the series – and sadly those people are few and far between – remember it fondly. It’s a product of an earlier time, an age when people were still clinging to a belief in magic.

Two decades later, I can’t help but wonder if Shelly Duvall would be able to interest anyone in the pitch for such a show if she were to attempt it tomorrow. No special effects? No action? No big revelations? No plot twists? So what if you can get Steve Carell to play a frog, no one is going to watch.

I would have watched, but then I’m not a film critic.

Tonight I rented Penelope and found it just as sweet and charming as I did when I first saw it in theatres. It’s a good thing I don’t listen to critics. Oh I read movie reviews – love them, in fact – but if I really want to see something, I’ll go in spite of the critics. Penelope, as you’ve probably guessed, didn’t fare too well when sacrificed up to the critic’s alter; this charming little movie got a score of just 48 on metacritic.com.

Wesley Morris wrote in his review for the Boston Globe that ”[Penelope] could have gone in a number of more inspiring allegorical directions but winds up your average bedtime story instead.” What Morris has forgotten is that the world needs bedtime stories and faerie tales. Sometimes the simplest messages – love yourself for who you are, value the person inside – are the ones people need to hear the most.

Penelope is a slightly new twist on an age old tale. It’s not told perfectly but it is told with affection. It stumbles and wanders down a few wrong side streets but it never strays too far from being a nice little movie. Some critics criticized the film’s jumble of visual styles and accents but again, they’re missing the key point – this is a faerie tale. The jumble of styles and characters helps place the story a step out of place with the real world – it could be any city in any country. Yes, it sometimes felt awkward but I think more thought went into those decisions than the filmmakers have been credited with. As for the reviewers and viewers who criticized the film for borrowing visuals from Burton, I’d urge them to check out the work of Edward Gorey – Burton’s great but even he’s not 100% original.

Penelope isn’t a perfect movie but, surrounded by slasher flicks and half-baked comedies , it’s refreshing to see a film that doesn’t aspire to be anything more than a nice bedtime tale. We need more movies like this and, in order for that to happen, we need to give nice little movies half a chance.