71% on Rotten Tomatoes
Chloe's thoughts: It's alright;
Low-energy entertainment;
Watch it in the cinemas (maybe, for the costumes and such)
Watch it if you: Love the original;
Don't mind autotuned Emma Watson;
Want to see beautiful costumes and set pieces;
Just want a fun and enjoyable movie without needing to overthink anything
Beauty and the Beast is the live retelling of the classic Disney animation that we all know and love, starring our favourite Stockholm Syndrome victim.
I remember when Emma Watson was first cast as Belle, the beautiful bookaholic that falls in love with the tormented and cursed Beast. Yes! everyone cried, she's PERFECT! I, too, was one of these, and I was very keen to see the stunning Emma Watson play the Disney princess whose name literally means beauty.
Recently, though, I've been seeing the trailers and the posters for this film, and I just couldn't get hyped about it. Emma Watson looked... bland. She looked awkward in the yellow dress, which didn't look that fabulous, and in some posters, she even looked like she had a huge hunchback! Look at this poster if you don't believe me. This isn't The Hunchback of Notre Dame! I cried out in protestation.
So, I went in to the movie with pretty low expectations. I just couldn't be blown away by Emma Watson, the CGI looked a bit off, and Ewan McGregor's French accent was just really... bizarre.
Having all these low expectations, the film ended up... alright.
Like it's a pretty decent film and was actually quite good compared to what I thought it would be, but there is no beating the original animation. It's nowhere near it.
Don't get me wrong, it's enjoyable, and it's fun, and I had a pleasant time (apart from a few things but more about that later).
And the costuming and the set pieces were great, but the movie doesn't offer much else apart from that.
I may be a bit biased though because near the beginning, the film starts off with one of the best songs ever (although I have a tendency to say that about pretty much all of the Disney songs that exist): Belle (Little Town). This is such an excellent song in the original, and yet here we are straight away introduced with Emma Watson singing. Except, it's autotuned.
And I think that just killed the rest of the movie for me, because every song she sang just sounded terrible. When she sings notes within her speaking range, she sounds decent. But when she goes a little bit higher than that, it starts to sound so weird.
And it's a shame because every other actor in this can sing. No one needs autotune here. And you can just see how hard they would have worked for that role, and how if they couldn't hit a particular note they wouldn't be autotuned, they would just be recast.
But Emma Watson, with her good looks and popularity, gets a role that 1. She doesn't look that great in, as I established already, and 2. she can't sing properly in. And she gets top-billed.
And remember how she turned down La La Land for this? Can you imagine if she was autotuned in La La Land?! Like I'm pretty sure Damien Chazelle wouldn't do that but still, thank heavens she didn't do La La Land.
As for the other songs, like Be Our Guest and Beauty and the Beast... they seemed a bit slower than the original ones, and sometimes they felt a bit anticlimactic. Be Our Guest looked amazing with all the dishes and food flying around though. That was very cool to see come alive. I don't know what it was with Beauty and the Beast but it wasn't impressive to me. Maybe Audra McDonald should have sung it instead of Emma Thompson (although we do need the grandmotherly British accent). But they are great songs so they still get a pass.
They had a few original songs thrown in there, and I quite liked them. The one that Beast sings is fantastic. One of them didn't have as much autotuning for Emma Watson, so I did quite like it.
And now that my clear bias for the rest of the film is out there, I'll try and be a bit more objective.
The actual directing of the film felt a bit flat and dull. The film is a bit long, running at 2 hours and 20 minutes, although some of the bits that they add in are actually quite decent. Although they do add in a few details that improve on the shortcomings of the original animation, and help to explain a few more things.
For example, why did the hag curse a little boy? Of course a little boy would be an arrogant prick!
And, how come no one remembered the prince in his castle?
Why does everyone love Gaston that much? Are they being paid to compliment him?
And, most importantly, Wait, isn't this Stockholm Syndrome?
All these thankfully get addressed or changed in the film.
And yeh, you might make your arguments against Stockholm Syndrome in the original animated movie, but it doesn't matter here because they actually get rid of it in this film! They've helped develop the character of Beast, and it makes sense that they would fall in love here.
But apart from that, the actual dialogue of the film sometimes felt a bit flat. There were quite a few good laughs here and there, but a lot of it seemed really odd.
As I said, the huge plus is the costuming and the set pieces, but then next to that you still have some weird CGI that isn't convincing, and then subpar songs and autotuning. Emma Watson looked great as peasant Belle but when she was wearing the yellow dress it just didn't look as beautiful as she could be. Overall the film was decent; it was enjoyable and fun. But it could have been so much more. In fact, it already is so much more, in animated form.
A few side notes:
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