Review of Beauty and the Beast (2017) by Lucas P — 10 Jul 2017

It's funny that last week, I praised the movie "Sing" for casting well known actors who could actually sing, which is so rare for a big-budget movie. This movie illustrates my point perfectly.

The movie has its merits, but is weakest on its voice talent, which is essential to carry a big sweeping musical like this one. The actors all have passable singing voices, but the only one with a voice strong enough to carry their role is Luke Evans as Gaston.

Even Josh Gad is not very strong in this. That being said, the film is a decent "live-action" remake of the classic animated film. Though I use that term loosely, as this movie is still about 80% animated.

..so what exactly was the point of making this movie again? Aside, of course, from the obvious Disney cash grab. You can't help but compare it to the original, and while it's a faithful adaptation (some of it is shot for shot), it falls short in a lot of respects.

There are the aforementioned mediocre voice performances, pacing problems (there is a ton of stuff added to beef it up which only end up slowing down the story), and tonal inconsistencies. How do you have a fun song-and-dance number about a vain but harmless buffoon of a character who in the next few scenes suddenly becomes a murderous sociopath? The ending gets really dark, a little too dark, to the point that the moral of the story seems to be that that enchantress was a total epic bitch.

On the plus side, there were some changes that I liked better in this version: Belle has more agency, Beast has a back story, and the enchantment/curse is more fleshed out. Also, in this version, they take the time to show how the titular characters end up falling for each other in a way that actually makes sense, while the animated film tried to explain it away in a single 2-minute throwaway song.

What the movie really has going for it is how it looks, and it really is gorgeous...but even then, it gets to be too much at times. It's so lavish that it tends to creep over the line into gaudy territory.

Sometimes it just tries too hard to top the original, and director Bill Condon seems to have adopted Gaston's philosophy of "most beautiful = best". But more is not always better, and the movie would have been more effective if it pulled back a little in places.

It's all spectacle with very little else.