Review of Beauty and the Beast (2017) by Roy G — 12 May 2017

When a movie is completely based on an older movie, especially a great one, a comparison must be made when reviewing it.

Positive.

+ Emma Watson is great.

+ The voice of the beast was very good. (Reminded me a bit of Worf from Star Trek or a Kilrathi from the Wing Commander games).

+ CGI was very good.

+ The new songs that were not in the first movie are ok.

Negative.

- The songs of the first movie are not as good in this live action version. In this type of movie you come preparing to hear the familiar songs that you love from the first movie, but then you find out that they changed the flow of all the songs (which made the original songs great) as well as some of the iconic lines from the songs for no good reason (like the lines by LeFou at the end of the Gaston song).

- Camera movement is very fast. When we are introduced to Belle's room in the castle the camera moves too fast and we can't see anything to feel in awe that was intended. When we see characters the camera don't stay on their faces long enough for us to familiar ourselves with their facial features to be able to relate to them and like them. We can barely make out Lumiere's face as he is moving all the time on the screen and there is hardly any close-up on his face. Also the dresser has no pupils in her eyes. This makes it really hard to relate to any of the characters and in a movie that is based on these characters it's a major problem.

- The "Be Our Guest" song/scene is one of the most memorable from the first movie as it was unexpected at the time due to it's choreography and grandeur. In this movie it's was underwhelming as it was hard to see what was going on on the screen and it suffered from the same camera movement and flow of the song issues.

- The relationship between Belle and the Beast is not developed enough, although this is true in the original movie as well.

- The introduction of a new character, the Enchantress was not needed at all.

- The ending of the movie was changed as well from loosing to winning by the magic of the Enchantress. This was made just to show how it would look if all the characters became permanently their object form. This took away from the good ending of the first movie and the suspense of the time limit by the falling rose petal. This made the entire concept of the falling rose petal meaningless!

- Gaston's death is changed not to include his struggle with the beast. This should have been the climax of the movie, but failed.

- Belle's mother explained, throwing interesting theories about her origin outside the window. Is her origin canon now?

- Pushing liberal agendas such as homosexuality and interracial relationship into the movie where they don't belong. Although I 100% support these agendas in life, I'm not keen of them being pushed on the viewer in a movie that is based on a previous work.

- The prince retained his "grrrr" beasty voice for a laugh (which wasn't funny). This is inconsistent with the transformation he already took reverting to the prince.

- Not funny. Bits that were intended to be funny were not funny at all and were just embarrassing.

Overall an ok movie that is not as good as the first one and does not contribute anything worthwhile over the first one, raising the question why it was made in the first place. There are also too many problems with it. A disappointment.

3 Stars.