Review - Penelope

Mark Palansky tries too hard to capture the whimsy of Tim Burton in Penelope and ultimately ends up making a film that has little charm and even less consistency.
Palansky has crafted a story about a girl cursed with a pig's nose thanks to a philandering ancestor. The only sure for the curse is to find "one of their own" who will love her. Of course, there is the obligatory overbearing mother who tries to set up Penelope with every blueblood suitor possible and keeps Penelope from figuring out that all she needs to break the curse is to love herself.
The real problem is that Penelope is no Rapunzel or Snow White; as a character she is actually completely uninteresting. Putting a pig-nose on a girl doesn't make her a fairy-tale heroine. It just makes her look stupid. The rest of the cast looks just as stupid by comparison including James McAvoy who has proven that he is better than this and shouldn't be slumming it in movies like this.
Reese Witherspoon is the only cast member who rises above the mess that is Penelope to turn in a solid performance as a biker-chick, excuse me Vespa-chick, with crazy hair and an awesome personality. Unfortunately, her role is little more than a cameo which leaves the reins in Christina Ricci's hands--always a terrible choice. Ricci's doe-eyed, little girl stare gets old quickly as does her whimpering and whining about what is actually a relatively mild deformity.
The film has some incredibly interesting stages, reminiscent of City of Lost Children, however it never commits fully to being a fairytale and thus fails as a story. It could have been successful had it any self-awareness, but Penelope suffers an identity crisis that cripples it and allows it to barely limp through the predictable finish line.