Beauty and the Beast Review

Pretty much a shot-for-shot remake, Bill Condon's Beauty and the Beast is an enjoyable film but it's inevitable to compare it to its original that this one is trying so hard to capitalise on. In that way, it does not surpass it but it does not fail, something I think many people are happy for.

The cast is perfect, the bad auto-tuned singing not withstanding. Emma Watson is a perfect Belle, she elevates the passivity of the original character into a dynamic and interesting character. Her singing, while good when sung live, is unbearable once autotuned. I really don't understand why they felt the need to mess with her vocals, she has a perfectly good voice on its own as you can hear during the film where they didn't feel the need to tamper with it at all. The rest of the cast is perfect in theory, but Emma Thompson and Ian McKellen stick out to me as a little off. Thompson lacks the warmth that Angela Lansbury leant to the character and Ian McKellen just did not hit any of the character beats that David Ogden Steirs originated.

The songs are brilliant, the new numbers like Evermore, Days in the Sun and How Does A Moment Last Forever are wonderful additions, they lend themselves very well to the score.

My biggest problem stems from Josh Gad's character LeFou. While I think Gad is perfect for the role, I question the decision to turn LeFou from a coded gay lacky to a love-sick, over the top gay stereotype. There was a huge deal made about the film and its inclusion of an officially gay character and I personally just saw a stereotype with no well-written textual backing for the decisions.

All in all I highly enjoyed it. Does it have any reason to exist? No. Is it shamelessly capitalising off of the original too much? Inevitably, yes. But I haven't enjoyed a cinema experience from Disney this much since Princess and the Frog and I left with a spring in my step for sure. I'll be watching it, no doubt, many times in the future.