Beauty and the Beast

I grew up with the Disney cartoon; it was one of the first films I ever saw, and it has shaped my life in more ways than I can count. I love that Belle is a bookworm, that she's willing to go after what she wants, that she dreams of more in her life.

So when the trailer dropped last year, I was very excited. Here was my favorite story with one of my favorite actresses in the lead role. I did my best to avoid further trailers and ignore as much news about the film as I could. I like sitting down in the theater with minimum outside opinions. Many times, my opinion is different from the critical reception.



The reviews, in this case, were absolutely right.

My first criticism, and I think this seriously hampered my ability to enjoy it, was that director Brian Condon decided to have large sections of the film be a shot-for-shot remake of the original. The difficulty here is that the entire film was not a shot-for-shot remake, and the new and older sections did not mesh well together. There were rushed portions where they should have taken more time (Adam's transformation from Beast to human), or places where the remake's shots were not as well done as the original (Be Our Guest).  Part of this is bad script writing. There were moments of painful exposition mixed with others of poorly written banter. Many lines intended to "be funny" fell flat or made me cringe. It did not have the cohesion of the original film, and when held up for comparison, the new was found severely lacking.

After thirty minutes, I sat there wishing Disney had hired WETA Workshop to do the effects, thinking of WETA's attention to detail and their miniatures work in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Beauty and the Beast relies so heavily on CGI that after awhile, it's too fantastical to be realistic. Even the Beast's CGI got in the way at times.

I did like the way they worked in themes from the Broadway show into the orchestration and tied it in with the new songs. I also had no objections to the actors' singing voices. There's always a lot of hype when actors sing, and inevitably they are compared to professional singers or Broadway stars. The singing here felt more natural and not over-produced. There are some of the cast members who have sung in other films (Ewan McGregor), though poor Lumiere needed significantly more voice coaching for his "French" accent.

The moments where they allowed the film to be something new, mostly in the montage after "Something There", it was almost charming. Belle and the Beast have more character development and backstory, and they bond over dead mothers and a mutual feeling of imprisonment. They also have more time together, nearly a week, as opposed to the three days in the original.

The hype for LeFou's "gay moment" was grossly exaggerated. He dances with a man for all of 1.5 seconds in the final number. The rest of his character feels terribly forced like Gad was trying far too hard to be "edgy". LeFou is comic relief. That is his role in the dynamic of the original story, and you can't change that if you don't allow the remake to be its own film. I understand and laud attempts for LGBTQ+ representation in media, but this borders dangerously on "queer-coding" a villain.

I have seen a lot of criticism of Bell's ballgown in recent weeks, but I liked what they did. It wasn't so elaborate that she couldn't dance or run or ride a horse (she doesn't change before returning to her village to save Maurice), but it's simplicity made it elegant. It fits with what Watson was trying to do with Belle.

The film does have some nice social commentary about perceived gender roles and expectations, it's subversive for Belle to teach other girls how to read, and I was reminded of how much I enjoy reading and why. In this case, I'll stick to other retellings like Alex Flynn's Beastly (the book, not the film).

Overall grade: C-