Directed by Daniel Barnz. Starring Vanessa Hudgens, Alex Pettyfer, Mary-Kate Olsen, Peter Krause, LisaGay Hamilton, Neil Patrick Harris 12A cert, gen release, 86 min

CINEMA HAS never shown much conviction when tackling Beauty and the Beast. The creature in Jean Cocteau's definitive incarnation certainly needed some work done, but he was no more hideous than Chewbacca or Harry from Harry and the Hendersons. The Beast in the Disney version was positively cuddly. What we want is a creature that looks like, I don't know, Hermann Goering or J Edgar Hoover. That sort of thing. Good luck knocking together a moral romance with that material.

The latest take on the tale features possibly the least sincere effort yet to provide us with a hideous protagonist. The story begins with lovely but nasty Alex Pettyfer, a popular high-school student, annoying an emo kid played – somewhat surprisingly – by the Olsen twin whose name appears in the credits above (life is too short to look certain things up). It seems that some movie deity has granted Olsen the goth’s ultimate fantasy: she can magically transform popular heart-throbs into hideous outcasts.

Well, that’s the idea anyway. Rather than suddenly coming across like the late J Edgar, Pettyfer acquires a few intricate tattoos, several saucy scars and – let’s be fair to the film-makers – one reasonably gruesome, moderately sizeable boil. In short, he looks like the sort of guy who, if attending an Alice in Chains gig, would require the biggest of sticks to repel nose- ringed suitors. It could, indeed, reasonably be argued that Pettyfer looks more handsome after the transformation.

All those whinges noted, it must be admitted that Beastlyis far from intolerable. The reliably charming Vanessa Hudgens does good work as the nice girl whom this protagonist, unlike the original Beast, doesn't exactly imprison (its's more of a sanctuary situation). Pettyfer himself, having started out as a dialogue killer of terrifying proportions, can now get through an entire line without stopping clocks or causing appalled planes to fall from the sky.

The best performance, however, comes from Neil Patrick Harris, master cameo artist, as the young man’s tutor. It’s such a shame that, in one sequence that no sane person will notice, he indulges in this writer’s least favourite linguistic atrocity. “Cliche” is not an adjective, NPH. It’s a bleeding noun.