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80An extraordinarily charming movie.
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75Aimed at tweenage girls and mushy romantics of all age and stripe, Penelope has a quick gait and a nice comic tone.
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75A sweet, unassuming surprise.
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75There are some flat moments, to be sure, and Palansky's direction can be a bit unsteady and awkward, but he doesn't wallow in the eccentricities or the modestly self-empowering moral. This fairy tale feels pleasantly down-to-earth.
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75This half-baked fairy tale always seems to be on the verge of becoming charming but despite a good cast it never quite succeeds.
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70The result is an entertaining comedy for young girls and older girls who still like a good romantic fable.
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Anyone willing to tolerate the tortured premise of the story will be paid off handsomely by several winning performances and a moral that makes most of the absurdity worthwhile.
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70More tart than sweet, this contemporary fairy tale provides a worthy vehicle for the fearless Christina Ricci.
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67Reese Witherspoon, whose production company made Penelope, contributes an inflated cameo that feels forced.
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63I wish it were truly special instead of an interesting near-miss.
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63An endearing premise and fanciful spirit aren't quite enough to rescue a film that has more heart than smarts.
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63Though the film has a strong cast, humor and a satirical take on celebrity culture, the story is spotty.
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63It's not the best of modern fairy tales but it's sincere and Christina Ricci's earnest and vulnerable performance touches the heart. Penelope is flawed but not irredeemably so.
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63A first film from director Mark Palansky, written by sitcom veteran Leslie Caveny (Everybody Loves Raymond, Mad About You), and the two are obviously indebted to the fanciful imagination of Tim Burton.
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Ricci is appealingly human, and some acknowledgement of the importance of female friendship, in addition to romance, is faintly touching.
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58First-time director Mark Palansky is trying for a deft, hip, modern fairy-tale feel, but the odd material, sprawling story, and complicated tonal balancing act get away from him, and the film winds up as a poorly paced tug-of-war between sweet quirk and sloppy camp.
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50Surprisingly pedestrian.
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50There are usually good reasons why a movie gets shelved for more than a year, however well-acted it may be and however well-meaning its message. Many are on view in Penelope.
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50I found the sight of McAvoy as a piano player in jazzy-seedy duds a lot more disconcerting than Ricci's porcine prosthesis.
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50There's no real rigor or craft applied to this story -- just mood, tone, neo-gothic imagery and frantic attitude. If only Penelope knew what it truly wished to be and how to go about it. Which is probably what this overly coy fantasy's modestly appealing title character wishes as well.
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50The whimsical ugly-duckling fable becomes more uneven as it proceeds, straining too hard to manufacture its quirky charms.
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It's as if Caveny had so many ideas that she simply couldn't bear to leave any of them crumpled up on her office floor.
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40Too heavy on applied charm and too flimsy when it comes to plot. The picture has a hapless, meandering quality that's tolerable at first but ultimately becomes maddening, as if it were a cartoon narrative recounted by a distracted 4-year-old.
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38Penelope is dead on arrival.
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38Under Mark Palansky's uninspired direction, magic eludes Penelope in scene after scene.
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38This story could have gone in a number of more inspiring allegorical directions but winds up your average bedtime story instead.
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30A hopeless jumble of visual and linguistic styles.
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30Penelope was in a trough of trouble before the oink on the script was dry.
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0Is there anything more dull than an ineptly cynical fairy tale?
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 12 out of 14
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Mixed: 1 out of 14
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Negative: 1 out of 14
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SammieH.8This is such a GOOD movie!! I recommend this movie to everyone!!
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MorganF6
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JayH.6