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‘Beauty and the Beast’ more of a recreation than remake
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A still from 'Beauty and the Beast.' (Disney/File)
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s the newest Beauty and the Beast breaks into its opening number, the déjà vu sets in. It’s as if audiences have seen this all before, down to the crowing rooster before the song begins.
Maybe it’s because they have.
Beauty and the Beast does nothing new with the 1991 classic, to the point where certain shots can be matched exactly to the animated film. Sure, there are new songs and added backstories but they only feel as if they are there to add to the two-hour runtime.
Emma Watson’s Belle is also exactly the same as the original, and while Watson certainly looks the part, she clearly struggles to act opposite CGI, which when coupled with her singing makes for a weak performance. The movie made one of its biggest mistakes when they had Watson sing immediately after Audra McDonald, a five-time Tony Award Winner and classically trained singer, the contrast causing Watson’s singing to sound that much worse.
The autotune on both Watson and Dan Stevens as the Beast was distracting and obvious, but still somehow does not hold a candle to the underwhelming and unsettling designs of characters like Lumière, Cogsworth, and Mrs. Potts. Notably, Ewan McGregor’s Lumière looks too busy and was hindered by poor voice acting. Character designs of the castle’s inhabitants would likely have looked better had they remained faithful to the animated version, yet it was the one place they did not.
Read also: Watch Ariana Grande, John Legend duet for ‘Beauty and the Beast’
While this version does go out of its way to answer a question or two audiences had after the end of the original, it does not fix any of the original’s pacing issues. If anything, both Belle’s sympathy and emerging feelings for the Beast and the final fight between the castle’s inhabitants and the villagers seem rushed and undeserved.
Just like in another Disney movie, The Princess and the Frog, much of the touted diverse cast spends much of the movie as non-humans. Yes, the village also seems quite diverse, but they have very little screen time and even fewer lines.
Similarly, the much-talked about “gay moment” involving Josh Gad’s LeFou is so blink-and-you’ll-miss-it that it was hard to tell if it had even happened. Still, Josh Gad does a surprisingly good job, and the movie did well by extending LeFou’s role. Luke Evans as Gaston also has some of the most interesting and effective scenes, and both he and Gad seem to be the only ones who realize how to properly play up their characters.
As Disney plans to release more live action remakes of its classics, it will have to do more than simply bank off of its previous successes if it wants to keep creating new ones. (sul/kes)
