“Penelope” may be about a girl born with pig’s snout. But the heartening family-friendly fantasy is anything but, um, a boar. As directed with an offbeat touch by Mark Palansky and written with a mix of subtle comedy and sweet pathos by Leslie Caveny, it’s the fable of the ugly duckling made relevant for the modern age.
Expectations were low for the British-flavored project headlining Christina Ricci and produced by Reese Witherspoon, who also takes a very small supporting role. The completed picture has languished “on the shelf” — as they say in Hollywood — for months without a firm release date. But, no doubt, the presence of “Atonement’s” newly hot “it” boy James McAvoy, as Ricci’s love interest here, helped get the surprising charmer out now.
You can see why distributors would find today’s satiric parable hard to market. This porker roast is — if you’ll pardon the expression — neither feast not fowl. At, first, the proceedings seem perhaps a little too weird for kids. Ricci communicates an eccentric vibe well enough untouched, much less without being made to resemble a swine mutant. But the imaginary coming-of-age piece is formatted in a sex- and violence-free fairytale form with a beautiful moral well-tailored to the young. So adults may not appreciate that “Penelope” is for them, too.
But it is!
Set in a cozy mansion and a heightened urban idyll, a cross between London and New York, the narrative follows the upper-crusty Wilhern family. They are under a generations-old witch’s curse that has left the isolated Penelope (Ricci) with an unfortunate facial deformity. Her protective and loving — but, also, shame-filled — parents (Catherine O’Hara and Richard E. Grant) try to break the spell according to their shallow interpretation of its language about love from one’s “own kind.” Thus, mom is tireless in trying to find a blue-blood to marry Penelope, even though most of them go running for the exits after a glance at her hog schnozzle.
But one possible paramour, a gambling addict with a heart of gold called Max (McAvoy), could be the exception. Unfortunately, he’s been sent to woo Penelope by a sneaky reporter (Peter Dinklage) and an unscrupulous former suitor (Simon Woods) who want to expose poor Penelope’s mug to the world.
The whimsical love story is unlike traditional fairy tales in its wry tone and life lessons. Inner self-love and self-acceptance — not an external factor like a handsome prince — ground the heroine’s happily-ever-after. And from the last scene of “Penelope,” we are left with a version of “The Secret” that blows away any message the Grimms or Mr. Disney had to offer: “It’s not the curse; it’s the power you give the curse that matters.”
