Beautiful Creatures is not a very good movie. It is derivative and dull, it is ineptly rendered, and beyond some handsome photography, it is ugly. Taking its cues from Thelma and Louise, Beautiful Creatures takes the story of two harried young ladies up against a monolith of crass male aggression, and recasts it as a black comedy played out against the dull glow of Glasgow. Dorothy (Susan Lynch) and Petula (Rachel Weisz) accidentally kill the latter's boyfriend--who, be assured, was a dick--and must find a way to dispose of the body. Unfortunately, said boyfriend's powerful Scottish family is bent on making the girls' task difficult, and so they must exert their feminine wiles to outwit the inexorable male fog that is closing in on them. I can't even remember how this film ends.

In the lead roles, Susan Lynch and Rachel Weisz are only passable--which is a crime. Squandering such talent in a film that ostensibly inverts the masculine conventions of the thriller/revenge caper sparks of a fatal shortsightedness, or worse, outright sexism. Indeed, Beautiful Creatures is, in the end, just one more macho fantasy in which women stand in for men.

However, when plotted against say, evolution, the failure of this film is incidental. Beautiful Creatures will be in theaters for a few weeks, and linger about on video for a couple months after that. The filmmakers may be reasonably expected to make more films in their lives--I have my doubts that any will be good--and will then die somewhere this side of 100.

The universe, however, is billions of years old, and may be reasonably expected to be around forever. Generations will come and go; human beings will evolve into pure energy; and, in the end, bad films like this one will simply vanish into the infinity of time.