Penelope

Is there anything more dull than an ineptly cynical fairy tale? As Penelope, an aristocratic brat who’s the victim of a family curse (and no, it’s not the egregious overacting of Catherine O’Hara and Richard E. Grant as her parents), Christina Ricci plays a girl with the nose of a pig. Sadly, the actress is so charmless in Penelope that we can’t look at her and see inner beauty. She’s just a snouted cipher. Escaping the prison of her family mansion, Penelope becomes a tabloid superstar freak in a plot that grinds along with a camp garishness that leaves one not merely bored but disenchanted. F