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| The Beast (Dan Stevens) and Belle (Emma Watson) in "Beauty and the Beast" Photo Credit: Imdb.com |
In 1991, Walt Disney Pictures released “Beauty and the Beast,” one of the best films of the studio’s ‘90s renaissance that became the first animated film to earn an Oscar nomination for Best Picture. Based on the French fairy tale, “La Belle et la Bête,” by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont, the film followed the story of the blossoming affection between a young woman and a cursed prince. With gorgeous animation, enchanting songs, and a legendary voice cast, Disney’s tender creation has endured in the hearts of viewers for a quarter of a century.
As Disney continues its new trend of making live-action remakes of their classic animated films, director Bill Condon brings us “Beauty and the Beast,” a movie that had a lot to live up to, given the beloved status of the original, but it ends up being inferior to its animated counterpart in many ways.
Belle (Emma Watson) lives in a French village, where she is seen as different from everyone else because of her intelligence and ambition, with only her father Maurice (Kevin Kline), providing support for her. One day, while traveling to the market outside of town, Maurice gets lost and finds himself at a castle, which is home to a prince (Dan Stevens) who has been cursed into a beast. After he imprisons Maurice, Belle travels there to save him and take his place. While in the castle, Belle will find compassion for the beast and realize there is more to him than his outward appearance.
While Emma Watson does a passable job as Belle and manages to separate herself from her Hermione Granger character from the “Harry Potter” series, she has the unfortunate task of living up to the vivacity of Paige O’Hara, who provided the voice of Belle in the animated original. Her singing isn’t as strong as O’Hara’s, and as talented as Watson is, her performance isn’t quite as memorable as one should be in a live-action retelling of one of Disney’s most classic films.
In terms of Dan Stevens, besides the opening and ending scenes when his character is human, the Beast is CGI throughout the rest of the movie. I would have much preferred to have the Beast be an actor in makeup than one made up of CGI because having him as a special effect diminishes the humanistic qualities hiding beneath his character and lessens the emotional and romantic connections between him and Belle. I can only imagine what gifted makeup artists (such as the team who worked on “Pan’s Labyrinth”) could have done if they were given the chance to provide makeup to Stevens, allowing him to act with the cosmetics that are applied to him and dig deep into his character.
For the voice cast of the castle objects, which includes Ewan McGregor as Lumière, Ian McKellen as Cogsworth, and Emma Thompson as Mrs. Potts, among others, it all comes down to it not being able to match up to the voice work of Jerry Orbach (Lumière), David Ogden Stiers (Cogsworth), Angela Lansbury (Mrs. Potts), and the other cast members of the original castle-objects voice cast. These talents immortalized their characters, while the voice actors for this remake, as fine as they are, can’t overshadow the superb work of the original voice cast. The objects in the animated film were also superior because since they were hand-drawn, that allowed them to move their faces in certain ways and gave them a wider range of expressions.
However, a bright spot in the cast is Luke Evans as the boorish, narcissistic, and scheming Gaston, the village hunter who pines after Belle. Despite the movie being average as a whole, I would be remiss if I didn’t say there’s a pretty great entertainment factor in his performance, as Evans is given the opportunity to show his comedic abilities, all while providing many of the film’s laughs.
The screenplay by Stephen Chbosky and Evan Spiliotopoulos has all of the scenes from the original (where they are better, but still adequately realized in this film), but also has some positive aspects as well, such as making this iteration of Belle a more progressive princess and the inclusion of some new songs, such as “Evermore” and “How Can a Moment Last Forever.” And although the narrative offers a bit of expansion on certain aspects of the story that the original didn’t cover, like the prince’s past and what happened to Belle’s mother, it isn’t handled too well in the remake, as the prince’s past only offers a few small details, and the way we see the past with Belle’s mother is done in such a way that doesn’t seem to fit with what we’ve seen in this story’s world. Also, at 129 minutes long, this film runs about 45 minutes longer than the original, meaning there’s quite a bit of filler involved. While it’s understandable that the studio wanted to make this version longer, given it’s meant to be a big-screen spectacle, it still could have been about 15 minutes shorter, even with some of the few new additions that actually work.
Despite the film lacking a lot of the original’s appeal, Condon is still able to offer some gorgeous fairy-tale imagery with the help of cinematography by Tobias A. Schliessler, production designing by Sarah Greenwood, and set decorating from Katie Spencer. However, with a film that has a beautiful visual scope such as this, it should have taken better care of bringing back what made the original so great, instead of simply feeling like just a way for Disney to make another potential billion dollars from the worldwide box office.
Over the past few years, we’ve gotten four live-action remakes of Disney’s animated classics: “Alice in Wonderland,” “Maleficent” (which is “Sleeping Beauty” told from the villain’s perspective), “Cinderella,” and “The Jungle Book.” While “Beauty and the Beast” isn’t as shallow of an effort as “Alice in Wonderland” and “Maleficent,” it still doesn’t reach the impressiveness of “Cinderella” and “The Jungle Book.” With the recent trend of nostalgia that seems to be going through Hollywood these days, it’s obvious to see why moviegoers would want to see this remake. But if you’re feeling nostalgic, you’re much better off watching the original again because although this remake has enough beauty on the outside, there isn’t as much underneath as there should be.
Final Grade: C
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