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Plot Summary: An adaptation of the Disney fairy tale about a monstrous-looking prince and a young woman who fall in love.

Director: Bill Condon

Writers: Stephen Chbosky (screenplay), Evan Spiliotopolulos (screenplay)

Runtime: 2h 9min

Main Cast:

• Emma Watson as Belle
• Dan Stevens as Beast
• Luke Evans as Gaston
• Josh Gad as LeFou
• Kevin Kline as Maurice

Review: by Erika T

Tale As Old As Time. More like Tale as Old as 1991? At least this movie is based off of the 1991 animated classic Beauty and the Beast.  We all knew with live action versions like Maleficient and Cinderella around, Disney wasn’t going to let its classic Beauty and the Beast go by without getting a live action remake.  I don’t think I need to provide much of a synopsis, so I’m just going to jump right into the review.

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What I Liked:

Luke Evans. Hands down he was the best thing about this movie. I never really thought about who could embody these characters in live action, and I never thought it’d be him since I’ve seen him in several other things, but I thought he nailed it and became Gaston.  He is also a fabulous singer. He had the best voice among the cast, strong and forceful.  I enjoyed his scenes the most and the Gaston bar sequence was really good. I wasn’t a fan of the changes to the lyrics, but that wasn’t on Evans.

Dan Stevens was pretty good as the beast. I thought he had a good voice for the character.  There were also a couple of additional lines for the character that I liked. We get a sense of how much he enjoys reading as well.

I’m a sucker for really nice ending credit sequences, and they didn’t disappoint here. It was very well done.

What I Didn’t Like:

The pacing in the first half felt way too fast. This movie is longer than its animated counterpart and yet I felt like they were flying through key scenes.  Eventually, it gets a little better and I realized it felt rushed because of the added content, like backstory of things we never really needed or asked for….

I also saw it in RealD 3D and that made it too dark. I kept lifting my glasses to try to get a better sense of the colors. I would NOT recommend watching it in 3D because there were not enough opportunities incorporating it to make it worth it, especially at the cost of enjoying what I assume was supposed to be super beautiful sets. I mean, the sets were still nice, but more color would have given it more of a wow factor.

The songs in general were not on the level of their originals. “Be My Guest” was okay if not a tad underwhelming. I felt the same about “Beauty and the Beast” too. I didn’t necessarily like or hate Emma Watson as Belle, but they should have done us all a favor and used a double to handle the singing. They certainly had no problem employing Tony Award winning Audra McDonald, and with people like her around, it makes the mediocre efforts even worse.

I will say I do think the relationship with her and the beast feels a little weirder in live action than it does in cartoon. I think it may add more of a squick factor for some viewers. Yes, it’s just a story, but I just found myself thinking about it more than I did with the cartoon.

The iconic yellow dress was definitely a let down for me. Like, would it have been so hard to make it like the original? At the very least they could have made it better.  And she wore it much longer in this film than in the cartoon, as if they were really trying to make the dress happen. But it didn’t happen. but this particular post sums up how I feel about the dress.

 

You can find more of Erika’s work at Fandom Fatales!

Images Courtesy of IMDB