Review of Beauty and the Beast (2017) by Cheyenne W — 19 Sep 2017

Tale as old as time, abusive relationships. Yup, if you know me and the gist of my reviews, you probably guessed that I didn't enjoy the new Beauty and the Beast remake, which came out March of this year. I also didn't enjoy the animated one, but at least the animated one lets you make fun of it. This one tries to patch up everything wrong with the original one and fails miserably. I guess it's important to mention that the original one came out in 1991 and was the first animated movie to be nominated for a best picture award at the Oscars. The animated picture category at the Oscars didn't start until 2001. I was anxious to watch this movie because I was so excited for it to be on my list of movies I love to hate. However, it was so bland and forgettable that the only emotion that it evoked from me was, meh.

Before I start, let's talk about Emma Watson. Her performance is passable. I liked her as an actress in Harry Potter, not so much in this movie or her previous role in Perks of Being a Wallflower. I'm not on her hate train, but I didn't think anything she said to the press justified her being in this film. She's a feminist and fights for rape victims and victims of domestic violence, yet she's in a movie about Stockholm Syndrome! The actor who played the Beast is extremely bland as well. He's just every other blue eyed blonde haired actor in Hollywood. To be honest, I forgot the Beast had a human form! Seeing the human playing the beast at the end is always jarring, but this time it was even more so. The Beast is extremely flat, it never feels like he's there. It never feels like the characters are anywhere but a sound stage. The only characters that give life to this film is the furniture because they're CGI, therefore, they can fit into the backgrounds seamlessly. That's not saying much since they're mostly extremely creepy. Without further adieu, here is Beauty and the Beast.

I'm not going to rehash the plot because you probably know it already. I will mention however, the things they've changed to try to make the movie "better" and the things they added to make it more "modern." Firstly, racism doesn't exist as we see in the first scene, which takes place in the ball room of the Prince's palace. We see white, African, and maybe Asian princesses vying for the Prince's attention as equals. At the ball, African German opera singer Audra McDonald performs an over the top number. Plumette, the feather duster and Lumiere's love interest, is an African English woman played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw. I guess racism can't exist in this world because there's a Beast in it. They also want a diverse cast where the POC aren't servants or "less than." But seriously, ignoring racism in a fantasy world is really annoying because there needs to be at least some realism in these films. Ray Fearon plays the wise black man who no one listens to. He also helps Belle by giving her books to read and encouraging her to teach other girls to read. I guess there's a good message in there, but it's never addressed again. Belle's need to better the village is thrown away in the 2nd and 3rd acts because she's trapped in the castle. In the first act, she's shown teaching a girl to read and then is ostracized for it, but she never goes back to the little girl to teach her to read, or use her new found title as Queen/Princess to try to change the town's mind. She just gives up because she's too ahead of her time and no one understands her. There are two interracial couples in the film, which is cool but also proves there's no racism in their world.

They also try to justify things that weren't clear in the first one, like why doesn't anyone remember the beast and that they have a king? Well, that's because the Enchantress made everyone in the castle forget the people they loved in the outside world and vice versa. They never actually say who was governing during that time. They also make it clear that the only animate objects in the house were once people, and that inanimate objects stayed inanimate. Yet, that doesn't change anything because in the Be Our Guest scene every fork, knife, and spoon dance around as if they were real. They can't ALL be real. Not to mention the champagne even has arms in that sequence. They also give an origin to why Belle wanted her father to bring a rose to her. It's because her father, who's an artist in this version rather than an inventor, painted a portrait of her and her mother before her mother died and it had a rose in it. Maurice, the father, keeps Belle's mother's story hidden in the shadows for some reason. We later find out he left her mother because she had the plague and she didn't want it to spread to him and Belle. Why did Belle need to discover that through the Beast?! Why did Maurice need to hide that information from her? Belle discovers this because the Enchantress gave the beast a magical book where he could go anywhere in the universe and Belle chooses to go see her mother and what happened to her.

Now time for LeFou. He's not over the top feminine and stereotypically gay, but he's still feminine so we can identify him as such. I guess there's no racism in this world, but homophobia is still a thing, and beasts exist. Okay? Like make up your mind! Anyway, he doesn't do anything "outwardly gay" (whatever that means). There's no groundbreaking moment that we should all applaud for, he's the exact same character from the first one except has more morals and intellect. He's not a fool in this version at all. He's not clumsy, but he is in love with Gaston, but later realizes the monster that Gaston is. There is one scene where a man is cross dressed and he likes it, so I guess they're breaking the gender binary that way?

Next, the farm she lives on isn't a farm. In this rendition, she lives in the middle of the town. In the original, she lived on a farm away from the rest of the village so we could identify her as an outsider. I laughed when she said she was a farm girl because their "farm" is a little patch of grass in front of the house.

They do talk about women's positions in society as being less than, so that's good, kind of? They talk about how women reading is unacceptable and women who remain unmarried become spinsters. Okay, so they have sexism, homophobia, but not racism, how does that work? Anyway, this is only shown to make Belle a "feminist" and a "strong independent woman" for wanting to read and not marry. It also is to show us that she's an outsider. But after the first act when her "character" is set up, her love of reading is never really explored. Only when she sees the Beast's library and learn that he loves to read too, and doesn't mind women reading/being educated, does this become an important plot point. Her "feminism" is only there to make a connection to the Beast, not for her own character advancement. She says she doesn't want to marry and wants to leave the town in the first act, and the latter she does, not so much for the former. But I don't think being captured by a beast was what she meant by "more than this provincial life.".

The enchantress could also change the weather in the surrounding area of the castle, so it's eternally winter. This is a clever trick because we really don't know how long Belle is trapped in the castle. It could be a few weeks or days or months. But if you pay attention, the events only take around a month. She's his prisoner for maybe 3 weeks, Maurice makes it back to the village around the third week, Gaston ties him up to a tree for five days, on the sixth day he's rescued by Agatha (the village spinster) and Gaston tries to get Maurice committed. Belle comes back either the same or next day her father is committed because she's freed by the Beast. She makes it back in one day and realizes she fell in love with her captor, and returns to him for the final climax.

I guess I do like the castle design. I think it's nice how the castle is closing in on itself. It's grotesque and crumbling. It feels like a prison, which it is. A downside is that these new movies make you want to see the old ones again - that's Disney's perpetual cycle it wants to put its viewers in. They want to make these things "timeless" so they can keep taking your money forever.

There's a second Bestiality moment with the feminine peacock feather duster Plumette. She's a bird, and Lumiere is a man attached to a candle. At least in the first one it was a feather duster without an animal body. But then again, at least this one isn't as oddly sexual as the first one. But all in all, I hate Lumiere. The wardrobe is weird AF. It looks scary and unpleasant. Same with the coat hanger, the tea pot, and Chip. Things that look good and cute with hand drawn animation doesn't necessarily look good with CGI.

They also try to answer the question of why the objects were cursed along with the Prince. The objects are cursed because they didn't help the Beast when he was being abused after his mother died. After she passed, his father started to abuse him (presumably). In the film, they say his father made his son "as cruel as he was." I guess he did that through violence which is why the Beast became so cold. He is a victim of domestic abuse, but that doesn't give him the right to abuse others. I guess people try to justify her not having Stockholm syndrome because she comes back to him on her own terms and she never knows about the curse and needing to fall in love with him, so she really does it unknowingly, but in reality, she was his prisoner. That could never turn out to be a healthy relationship. It's not up to her to fix him and make him whole, or even justify his actions as a Beast. Women aren't there to solve men's problems, especially when they're abuse victims themselves.

In addition, the movie is 2 hours and 20 minutes long. It could and should be 1 hour and 30 minutes, but it adds so many unnecessary songs and scenes to make it "deep" and flesh out the characters because they're so wooden, that it becomes boring. One new song they added was Days in the Sun to help Belle cope with her weird feelings about the Beast after learning he was abused. She begins to love him because he's sad and disturbed and she feels like she needs to help him. In addition, she could have just left him in the snow to die and be eaten by wolves, but because she's so pure she decides to help him and stay in the castle with him.

Like I said before, fantasy needs more realism. The backgrounds are shitty and Emma Watson should be cold! She's never cold. She should be bundled up in fur, not wearing a simple cloak. It looks like they're not even outdoors for god sake! There's another lame addition which I mentioned earlier, and that's the book. It's only there for the Beast to realize Belle comes from a good family and that her father isn't a thief for wanting to steal the rose for Belle. It's also there for her to appreciate the present. Like "hey, I could have had the plague and died. I'm in such a better place now." Not to mention, she should have missed her father THEN, not after the ball.

The next addition is the beast's solo. He sings when he "let's her go." I guess it's just there to show how much he truly loves her and that doesn't see her as his prisoner anymore, or a way to escape an evil curse. Actually, the Beast never tells Belle about the curse or the rose, so in this one, you can really argue she loves him and he loves her. But that doesn't really work in their prisoner/guard relationship. Also, is the Beast faking his feelings for her? What if someone really loved him, but he didn't love them? Gaston is as evil as the beast. But he's only evil so Belle has no prospects, it's just the beast or Gaston. When in reality, Gaston should be the hero, but because he's so much of an evil asshole, he's not. But to be honest, even her father was like "what the fuck, you love him now?" when Belle returns to save him.

Overall, I give the film a 4/10. It's watchable, but not for the right reasons. Don't let the songs, and dresses fool you, Belle is a victim of Stockholm syndrome and the Beast is, well, a BEAST!