Emma Thompson has exactly the career I want to have. She shows up in odd films, knocks out five to ten quality minutes of work and leaves before anybody can sick of her. And she’s awesome at it. Here’s what I remember from Men in Black 3: Emma Thompson managed to upstage the French Prince, Tommy Lee Jones , Josh Brolin and a bunch of aliens with 30 seconds of voice work. Here’s what I remember of the entire sum of Harry Potter outtakes: Emma Thompson’s hilarious dinner errors. And here’s what I remember of Beautiful Creatures: oh, that’s Emma Thompson. Huh, kinda plain role as just a conservative Southern parishioner, ah, 
it’s a ruse and she owns both characters. That woman is awesome.
Beautiful Creatures is about dark witches battling light witches. This battle takes place in Nothingtown, South Carolina. When good Southern witches battle bad Southern witches, they substitute ruby red slippers for Civil War reenactments. I do declare those slippers are so gauche, anyhoo. Ethan Wate (Alden Ehrenreich) is the local hunky charismatic beatnik – a phrase I never thought I’d hear or write – who is drawn to the girl not like all the rest. Sigh. Lena Duchannes (Alice Englert) -stop. Just stop. People. “Wait” is spelled W-A-I-T. “Duquesne” is trickier, but it is spelled “D-U-Q-U-E-S-N-E.” get that phonetic crap right outta here. As I am quite clearly NOT the world’s foremost expert on all things grammatical, it is important not to confuse me or all the people at my level. This isn’t Cat in the Hat. Your tale is about witches messin’ with Southern tradition. When the spelling is bad, the, um, magic spelling is bad. Or something like that. Ethan falls hard for Lena, but she plays hard to get because, “oh no! The dark might claim me.” [monotone] oh no, that would be tragic, now, wouldn’t it? [/monotone]
Then Jeremy Irons shows up as Daddy Witchbucks because the film wasn’t creepy enough.
Jeremy Irons and Emma Thompson are pros, but they’re essentially there to chew scenery. The conversations between Lena and Ethan are the cornerstone of the film. These moments aren’t half bad:
Lena: Promise me one thing; it will be a perfectly normal human date.
Ethan: I swear. I won’t even call you after the date.
Lena: Jerk.
Ethan: Witch.
Not exactly Shakespeare, but when you compare it to the teen hoof-in-mouth disease of, say, the Twilight franchise, you’ll find this mildly refreshing. You might even root for these nothing actors to show up somewhere again just so there’s one less role for Kristen Stewart to botch. That might even be a beautiful feature.
A rebel in love with a witch
Her family makes everyone twitch
The magic is furious
If lacking for curious
You care? Hmmm, must be a glitch
Rated PG-13, 124 Minutes
D: Richard LaGravenese
W: Richard LaGravenese
Genre: Come sit a spell.
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: The witch-love support group
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Puritans
♪ Parody Inspired by “Witchy Woman”
