I had never seen the cartoon, I knew it won an oscar, first animated film to do so and I saw snippets of the dance scene which I thought looked quite magical, but I didn’t know the plot, I didn’t know why he was a Beast and how the girl was involved, also I didn’t care or want to watch the live action version. I was dragged into watching this with my wife.
I hadn’t read any reviews, the only article i read was about a character who was overtly gay and how this had caused controversy for disney, but when I was watching it I didn’t see anything offensive, sure there were moments that were gay, more batman campy, and nothing to be angry about. If anything gay people should be angry about their representation as a just for laughs statement on their sexuality.
Throughout the film my wife chimed in with,
‘this is exactly like it was in the animated version.’
Hermione, is an actress that comes across as wholesome, despite the boob gate situation she got herself into with radical feminists, she is an actress that feels like a nice girl that was in your class that you secretly liked but thought was not into boys, she is the girl you think of when romance springs to your mind, not ass popping, look at me as an object of sexual desire. If for example Nicki Minaj played Belle, it would feel like a live action porno version of Beauty and the Beast. Anyway.
Half way through the film I was bored. The songs, none were memorable – the dance scene in the beats palace, should have been better, should have given you goose bumps, but it didn’t, it ended up feeling weird, I mean there is a girl, falling in love with a man that looks like a dog, who imprisoned her in place of her father, for ‘stealing’ a rose?
The supporting actors were grating, the cupboards voice gave me a headache, the fact that people in the Beast household became objects wasn’t cute it was scary, if i had a choice between being a tea cup and a Beast, I’d choose becoming a Beast, he got the best deal of them all, now if the curse didn’t break then would the Beast become a dog, or a bear or a mixture, because Ewan Mcgregor was going to become an actual candle lamp, but then questions of where is the soul located emerge and these questions are too difficult to answer.
The real culprit is the woman that bewitched the Beast and his household people, she could have just sat down and had a discussion, she was trying to make him a better man by doing on to him what he has been doing onto others only doing much worse onto him, she needs to sit down and think about what exactly her plan was.
One of the first things I noticed, was the amount of black people in the film, there was also an inter-racial couple, it just shouted ‘look we are not racist,’ but where is the Asian girl and the Chinese guy, why am I not on screen!
In the end the pots and pans are trying to get The Beast and Belle together, so that they will fall in love and the curse will break, so all of them including The Beast are playing Belle – the curse will break if a girl falls in love with the Beast, it doesn’t matter if this love is manufactured, or at least in the beginning, luckily Belle actually ends up really making the Beast fall for her. Also on a side note, I was told this by a bunch of friends who are girls, they said that Beast was more handsome than the human playing him.
The Beauty and The Beast is too long, adds nothing to the original, most of the songs go on for far too long, and none of the songs are memorable, in fact the film itself is not memorable, Owen Shaw was pretty good in it and Hermione did just about a good enough job, but I do think an older actress would have been a better choice, or they should have made the Beast look a bit younger,
The Beauty and The Beast should be seen because of the fight scene in the end.
3/5