Review of Beauty and the Beast (2017) by Sean W — 18 Apr 2018

Remaking a film can be thankless task. You stick close to the source material and you're going to piss off fans. If you stray too far, you're going to piss off fans. The best that we, as an audience, can really hope for is that the filmmakers have a clear and solid vision for what they want to do, and that it can be delivered in a satisfying way. That will, more or less, determine your enjoyment of this live-action iteration of Beauty and the Beast. It's almost the same exact story as the animated film, beat for beat, save for about 40 minutes of material tacked on. This creates a very mixed-bag of a film, so let's get into it the "why." I'm not going to go over the plot points, as it's pretty much the same as the original, so let's discuss what differentiates this version from the original.

The film's beginning is its weakest, as we (after the prologue) open with Emma Watson as Belle singing her way through town, much like the original. This scene falls flat for several reasons - the biggest being that Watson is entirely miscast as Belle. The young actress is talented, no doubts there, but her Hermione shtick doesn't work for Belle. Belle is full of hope and optimism and is capable of infusing those around her with absolute happiness thanks to her charm. Watson, on the other hand, looks like she's going to cry when she's smiling. It doesn't work for the character. That, and the fact the producers felt it necessary to auto-tune her voice to hell and back. Listen, there's no way the vocal performances are going to measure up with the original - we go through that acceptance with every cinematic adaptation of a musical - but it would've been far less noticeable to dub Watson's singing than take her original voice and turn it into something that doesn't even sound human. It's unnatural and completely takes you out of the experience. Sadly, that's just the beginning.

There isn't one song in this version that measures up to the original. A lot of the original songs are extended, to some degree, and the extensions either mess with the rhythm or just feel tacked on. Completely unnecessary. There are 3 new songs in this film, 2 of which I really enjoyed, but we'll come back to those.

The next thing I noticed is that this film is oddly shot, feeling more like you're watching a televised stage play than an actual film. Stylistically this idea doesn't stray from many other musicals, but I was oddly conscious of it during most of the song and dance numbers in this film. Then there's the poor art and costume direction. Now, I'm not usually one to pick apart costumes, but when Belle appears in the ballroom sporting that yellow dress, you'll yearn for the animated version. That's saying something! That goes for the CG counterparts of all the characters in the castle. I don't think they should have just regurgitated the original designs, but these designs are much too busy. It's like comparing Michael Bay's Transformers to the original toys - sometimes you can go TOO far and when things are too busy, you lose emotion in the performance. Ironically enough, they have the exact opposite problem with Beast himself. There's a song he sings that's a new addition to this film, and while the song is quite good, his performance deflates it. There's no emotion in his face. I'm not one to say that CG is incapable of capturing a performance (look at the recent Planet of the Apes films), but the animators fail to do so here.

While this review sounds like I'm bashing every angle of it, let me say that I was happily surprised by some of the additions to the story. Sure, it's still weird that Belle falls for someone who's okay with kidnapping her father (and eventually her), but this film does a better job of showing us how our heroine empathizes with the inhabitants of the cursed castle. There's also a nice little scene towards the beginning where Kevin Kline, playing Belle's father, sings a tune that alludes to the family's back story. Sadly, they ruin this subtext with a scene later on that shows us that Beast can somehow magically teleport anywhere in the world with a magical book. This kinda ruins the idea that he's imprisoned in the castle, but you win some/lose some with these new additions. In the 'win' category, we have some solid performances from Luke Evans and Josh Gad as Gaston and LeFou. Dan Stevens is fine as Beast, although it's hard to tell how much better his performance may have been before he was CG. And as much as I enjoy Kevin Kline, his character is much less of a bumbling idiot, which I'm not quite sure works as well given the events of the film. Also, it's worth mentioning that Sir Ian McKellen is wonderful as Cogsworth. The rest of the characters pale in comparison to their animated counterparts.

So at the end of the day, the film came off like a kind of "concert rendition" of the original Beauty and the Beast. A novelty to check out and (try to) enjoy, but one that doesn't come close to replacing the original that spawned it. It's not a bad movie by any means, but it takes over 2 hours to tell a story that the animated version did far more efficiently in less the time.