When is a fairytale not a fairytale? When it’s a modern fairytale, or at least when it’s not a modern Tim Burton fairytale. I had fairly high hopes for this, after all it has a pretty stellar cast and the right ingredients for a story, directed by Mark Palansky it is classed as a comedy romance (but not exactly chic flic material) with a dark side. I think that is where things start to unravel.

Penelope (Chistine Ricci) is a child born to a family cursed by a witch from a bygone era, for wrongs done to her daughter by their ancestral owners of the mansion. We see glimpses of the child born with a pigs snout, and hidden by her family until she is a young woman, when they are keen to set the wheels of matrimony in motion. For this task, they hire an agent to provide eligible young men to court her, but each and every one runs away horrified when she reveals her piggy feature, some leaping from windows in their haste. Her highly strung and snooty mother played by Catherine O’Hara, perseveres with the attempts to find her a suitor, whilst her more earthy father (Richard E Grant) seems the long suffering but caring foil. The story gains momentum when Penelope is confronted by a young man named Max (James McAvoy), a gambling addict who tries to woo Penelope to get a picture for a newspaper story, but finds himself charmed by her – and she by him. Penelope escapes the mansion that has been her prison for many years, and heads into the city to find herself amongst friends in an Irish bar, with Reese Witherspoon turning up a very understated performance as her motorcycling companion……and so the story unfolds.

The tale then has a pretty good base, almost the reverse of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ but with a twist in the form of the modern setting and the message that the film delivers. Where it scores highly is in the chemistry between Penelope and McAvoy, which is almost enough to surmount the films shortcomings. The problem with this is that I was never sure of it’s real premise, it is charming, but not funny, it certainly is not ‘dark’ since the pig’s snout is simply not a thing of horror that would prompt the reactions that we are subjected to, and the film itself seems unsure of where its real aim lies. That said, it is as mentions a star studded affair, and this gives it the panache to deliver the message of self acceptance and get away with the bare minimum of fun. At under 90 minutes it is something a family could enjoy without any worries on the children front.

6.0/10, Not so much a fairytale as a modern romance with a twist, but the whole is less than its parts and could have been so much better in the hands of someone like Tim Burton. As it was a genial, untaxing movie that leaves the message intact, even if it might be forgotten by the start of the next event.