Before I really start, I’d like to get two things out of the way. The first is that I know I’m not at all the target audience for this film so take this review with a grain of salt. The other is the whole “controversy” that’s been drummed up by the media. There’s been a lot of talk about the fact that one of the characters is supposedly gay and the film will feature an “exclusively gay moment”. There seem to be two groups here, one that has demonized it as propaganda, and the other that has been parading it around as being progressive. I’m here to tell you that it’s neither. Personally I’m perfectly fine with including a gay character, but that’s not really what this is. In the end all it amounts to is a couple of cliched gay jokes which neither offend nor empower either group resulting in nothing but free publicity which is what the real goal was anyway.

Anyway, as far as the movie itself goes, it’s a mixed bag. I’m not sure what exactly the point is behind these live action cartoon remakes other than making easy money. I’m not too familiar with the finer details of the animated version and I’m pretty sure that I’ve never seen it in full, but there didn’t seem to be much different here, or at least not enough to justify its $160 million existence. One of the apparent selling points was that it fixed some of the plot holes of the 1991 version. That’s fine, but does it matter? Was your enjoyment of the original film hampered in any way by the fact that the timeline was a little screwed up?

I’m fine with the addition of the enchantress as a character as well as the slightly beefed up backstories for our leads, but it still feels unneeded. Speaking of the leads I have some problems with them as well. Emma Watson wanted to do something different with the character of Belle, but it doesn’t show. She plays it just like the cartoon one, only a bit stiffer and with the use of everybody’s favorite cheating device. That’s right, auto-tune! At least it’s only used for Watson, as far as I can tell. The rest of the cast is generally good with Luke Evans and Josh Gad being the highlights. Every time the two of them are onscreen, the movie becomes much more fun as both of them give very entertaining and cartoonish physical performances that translate very well to live action. They’re also involved in the two best musical numbers in the movie, “Gaston” and “The Mob Song”. Actually all of the musical numbers are decent at the very least and I liked the addition of a new song for the Beast titled “Evermore”. Voices of the non-human characters are fine, but it leads me to my next issue.

I don’t think the look of the Disney movie translates well to live action. For me it comes down to my dislike of CGI unless it manages to convince me it’s not CGI or is used to stylize a film rather than simply create the illusion of things that aren’t there. Unfortunately Beauty and the Beast does neither of those things. Take for example the “Be Our Guest” sequence. On a technical level I’m aware that it’s very well done, but it fails to impress me because since it’s all CGI it’s really no different from the animated version.

It also seems that all of the enchanted objects in the castle and the Beast are stuck in that uncanny valley of CGI which is bizarre considering they aren’t made to resemble humans. In fact most of the film falls into that weird artificial look and I’m not sure if I can pinpoint the cause of it. The only other live action Disney remake that I’ve seen parts of was the 2015 rendition of Cinderella, and it looked fine to me, so why didn’t this one more resemble that? Well I guess it comes down to direction and while Kenneth Branagh was behind Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast was helmed by Bill Condon, the mastermind behind the last two Twilight movies. I know it seems like I’m

being too harsh, and like I said before I’m definitely not who this was made for, but I just don’t see the point of it all. I’m sure that a younger crowd will love this but my advice? Stay home and watch the 1991 film instead.