Beauty and the Beast (2017)

Having never had a strong nostalgic connection to the 1991 movie (I was a Little Mermaid girl), I wasn’t getting my hopes up for the live action adaptation. 

I don’t need to tell you the story - beauty’s on the inside, guys - but it did its job and it did it successfully. It’s a faithful adaptation, but thankfully it makes small changes: I appreciated that Belle and the Beast had more footing as equals and that Belle was a more active character. There was a lot of talk around added touches with characters like Le Fou whose storyline as a gay character is not limited to subtext. I'm uncertain of how I feel with regards to that specific change - it felt a little overly played for comedy in a way I was a little uncomfortable with.

In addition, the film is absolutely gorgeous. The CGI is generally beautifully integrated (with the exception of one bath scene that totally broke my immersion), the performances are excellent (Luke Evans’ Gaston was far and away my favourite; I could listen to Audra McDonald sing all day) - it evokes the sense of magic that you want in a fairytale. I wish more time was given to the emotional payoff of the stories of the “furniture” - some of the most impactful segments were the bits between them concerning the curse, even more so than with the cartoon. Sadly most of my issues with the original story still stood, along with a general inability to capture the childlike fantasy some part of me kind of wanted. I also think that some of the songs were weaker than others, especially with performers like Emma Watson not being…singers. The new songs added next to nothing to the story. I personally also found the sound editing a little distracting, and I'm not sure if that was me being finicky or if other nerds picked up on it.  

A lot of it comes down to me and my demographic - they don’t want weird, unromantic, un-nostalgic twenty somethings. They want people who love love stories, people who love fairytales, people who love magic and old disney movies and musicals.

Rating: 5/10 - It’s best to get swept up in this movie and not to think about the ins and outs of object sentience or plot logic, as with the original. I can still appreciate what it did, but I rate based on how a movie did it for me, and while I liked it, I wasn’t left wanting more and often felt like rolling my eyes. I’m the worst and I hate fun. You don’t come to me for fairytales.