I'll start with the positives, which means pointing out the obvious: this is a gorgeous looking film, for the most part. The costumes are an enchanting blend of dark fantasy and French period wear, and the sets - especially the fabled castle where most of the movie takes place - are crafted with an elegant eye for detail, and the film presents numerous glamorous, fantastical setpieces for its mostly well choreographed musical numbers. The talking servant characters are particularly marvelous to watch, with Cogsworth being probably the one with the least amount of screen time but also the one I found myself staring at most often. The movie does have a weird tendency to sometimes teeter between delightfully campy and extravagant, and slightly bombastic. The "Be Our Guest" sequence can be at once dazzling and garish.
The same can be said for most of the performances. Luke Evans, alongside being a considerable few dozen pounds lighter than the picture his character song paints of him, vastly over-sells as Gaston, turning a lovably hateable exaggerated super-hunk narcissist into an entitled, believable, snakelike asshole. With his over-expression more fit for the stage he hails from, Evans manages to make this live-action adaptation of Gaston somehow more cartoonish than his hand-drawn predecessor. Josh Gad, a respectably talented actor and singer in his own right, sometimes seems to be playing his role of Le Fou sarcastically, with his appearance on screen alongside his credit at the end making me legitimately laugh out loud at how oversold and goofy it was.
Emma Watson is very attractive, and suitably okay as Belle, being at least the minimum of how likable a character played by Emma Watson can be, and delivering some sweet performances of the songs, but Watson is a mostly more restricted singer, and many of the most memorable songs lose their power at her inability to nail those really high notes. The cast playing the servants fill their computer-generated roles fairly marvelously, with McGregor and McKellen making usually cute and fun banter, and their musical performances mostly great. The vocal performances here don't match or exceed those of the original cartoon, but they're different and entertaining in their own right. Dan Stevens has an original new song composed by Alan Menken in the third act called "Evermore" where he actually gives a very good (if slightly noticeably over-produced at some points) vocal performance. The song is basically useless from a narrative standpoint, and as many critics before have pointed out the cartoon managed to communicate the same basic emotions in about five seconds and had a greater impact, but if we're going to throw in new musical numbers to pad out the running time and increase Oscar chances, they might as well be serviceable and nice to listen to, and "Evermore" does that.
It's hard to evaluate Stevens's regular performance, as the visual effects team deserves most of the credit for the visual aspects of his performance. The design of the Beast has always been strange to me. As far as cartoons go, this Beast is a perfectly suitable looking one, but it unfortunately was not convincing enough when it really needed to be, i.e. when the filmmakers are trying to make the audience forget Emma Watson is doing the waltz with a 6'7" man in a neon green leotard.
And I think that's my main problem with this movie - the fact that it exists. There are just some stories or aspects of them that are not properly adaptable from cartoons and drawings to live-action films, and in my opinion, a story about a woman who falls in love with a giant lion-bull-goat-man after being seduced by his hypemen - who are a candle, a clock, a cup, and a drawer - is one of them. When an entire film is vibrantly sketched drawings, my disbelief is suspended to degrees unattainable by anything put to real celluloid within the first seconds of the film. When most of the characters and surroundings are tangible and real and are interacting with hunks of data that objectively aren't there, filmmakers need to work harder to make my brain disconnect from how strange and incongruent it is so I can accept the story. The visual elements of this film are either mostly unconvincing or done precisely how I'd expect from watching the cartoon.
The narrative doesn't act as an antidote to this problem either, as no real changes are made to the original story, save for minor details shifted around that mostly either do nothing or introduce new or more plot holes. Not much of this film, visually or narratively, is imaginative, subversive, or wholly realized enough to justify its adaptation. I personally don't have any real emotional or nostalgic attachment to the 1991 animated Beauty and the Beast, so I'm not accusing this movie of ruining my childhood, and I wouldn't even if I did have a connection to the original, because that's ridiculous. I'm also not one to complain that this explosion of reboots, remakes, and sequels is surprising or new. But outside of money, I like to have a fairly clear narrative or aesthetic justification for the decision to remake something that already exists. Beauty and the Beast falls on the side of films where I can't really find any. For every opportunity it takes to be superficially subversive, it matches with a watered down carbon copy of your favorite things from the cartoon. This adaptation often feels like a discount version of the original, except it also cost seven times as much money to make. With all that money and technology, couldn't we have either tried something new or doubled down on the unironic romanticism? At least make the choice.I have no problems with remakes and reboots, and Beauty and the Beast is mostly pleasant and sometimes even beautiful, but it also feels mostly pointless. It will take longer than it should and Hollywood will learn all the wrong lessons from it, as this world often goes, but eventually having entire quarter-billion-dollar movies serving as just two-hour reminders and suggestions of better, more honestly crafted movies past is not going to be enough to pacify, much less enchant audiences. It's passably entertaining for now, but I feel that these types of films could get old very fast. These live-action adaptations will have to start having some great artistic vision and focus if they want to continue tricking people into seeing stories they've already seen, as they've done forever. Overall, this live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast has some gorgeous visuals, nice songs, and some decent performances, but mostly fails to justify itself as anything more than a big-budget eye candy-filled piece of nostalgia baiting. It's not quite trash, but it is disposable.
Sidenote: The thing keeping me from giving this film a "C-" is a scene where Belle playfully hits the Beast with a snowball, and the Beast returns fire and nails her in the face, sending her flopping on her back. It had me laughing for a solid two minutes and is unquestionably the best scene in the whole movie.
Grade: C
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