"Penelope" ** (out of four): Less-than-magical fairytale about girl who must find true love in order to break the family curse that left her with the nose of a pig.

Director Mark Palansky's "Penelope" is set up as a modern day fairytale. Set in an unnamed city (very clearly London with an amalgam of British and American accents), Penelope Wilhern is born to a family of blueblood socialites with a centuries-old curse which places the nose of a pig upon the first-born Wilhern daughter. Through some expository rigmarole, we're told that Penelope is the first daughter born in several generations, leaving her stuck with the snout until she finds true love "among one of her own". Rather than face a gawking public, mom and dad Wilhern (Catherine O'Hara and Richard E. Grant) fake Penelope's death and keep her locked in the attic. Pretty dark stuff, but it's all told in a whimsical voice-over (the type featured weekly on TV's "Pushing Daisies") and the moralizing is happily kept to a minimum.

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