Beauty and the Beast (live-action remake) (2017)

Starring: Emma Watson, Dan Stevens, Luke Evans, Kevin Kline, Josh Gad, Ewan McGregor, Stanley Tucci, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Ian McKellen, and Emma Thompson
Grade: C+

I can’t believe how much money this movie made.

Summary

Honestly, if you’ve already read my summary of the 1991 version, you don’t have to read my summary for this film because it’s basically the same thing.

Even so…

As you probably already know, the Prince (Stevens) is a selfish prick. He taxes the village to fill his castle with presents and now he’s hosting a celebration of sorts. During this party, an old woman offers a rose in exchange for letting her stay for the night. He refuses, but the woman, telling him to not be deceived by appearances because beauty is found within, reveals herself to instead be a beautiful enchantress. All the guests run out of the castle as the Prince begs for forgiveness, but she decides he needs to be taught a lesson, cursing him and turning him into the Beast. All of his staff members, who were innocent bystanders, are all cursed as well and turned into live household objects. The enchantress also erased all memories of the Prince and his servants to the outside citizens, so they’ll be in the castle alone. The rose she offered is also enchanted and is kept in a glass case. If Beast is able to love someone and that someone loves him back, before the last petal falls, the spell will be broken. Otherwise, they will be stuck in their cursed forms forever.

Belle (Watson) walks through the small village to return a book she was reading. At the same time, the whole town sings about how weird she is for being literate or whatever. Later, arrogant hunter Gaston (Evans) tells his sidekick LeFou (Gad) about how badly he wants Belle. He goes to ask her out, but she turns him down quite swiftly. She goes home to her father Maurice (Kline), an artist still mourning his deceased wife on the daily. After they talk about her because Belle loves to hear about her, Maurice heads off to the market, promising to get Belle a rose like he always does before he comes back. Later, Belle is out and about. As she waits for the laundry to be done, she teaches some stranger child how to read a page out of a children’s book. For some reason, some guy gets mad over this, and a group of people throw her laundry all over the place. Shortly after, Gaston tries to swoop in and convince her to consider them as an item, but Belle makes it very clear she will never marry him. Sometime after, Maurice takes a wrong turn and is chased by a pack of wolves into a snowy forest. He gets separated from his horse Philippe at one point, but he’s able to reconnect with him right before the wolves get him. Next, they go straight to the nearest shelter which is of course, the Beast’s castle. After setting up Philippe with some hay and water he found outside the castle, Maurice goes inside to greet the host, not realizing where he’s at. He enters the castle but finds no one, so he wanders around while the cursed human servants try to stay in place like the objects they are, though they don’t do a great job at it.

Right away, we see the candelabra Lumière (McGregor) and clock Cogsworth (McKellan) talking to each other. Once Maurice warms himself by the fire, he helps himself to a dinner left on the table because he’s incredibly rude. Chip (Nathan Mack), Mrs. Potts’s (Thompson) son and literal teacup, ruins everything by revealing himself to be alive and subsequently apologizing for it. Maurice freaks out, gets Philippe, and tries to get the hell out of there. However, he stops himself once he realizes he didn’t get Belle’s rose. He goes to the garden and snatches a single rose. This is when the Beast shows up in the flesh, and Maurice hits the ground in shock. As Philippe runs away, Maurice is taken as prisoner in the Beast’s castle. Philippe goes straight to the village. Belle finds him, forcing the horse to take her back to wherever Maurice is. Thankfully, this is the smartest horse alive.

She enters the castle, as Lumière ponders if she will be the one to break the curse as soon as he sees her. Not realizing Lumière is alive, Belle grabs him to see once she hears coughing from the upper level of the castle. She finds Maurice in a small prison cell, with Maurice telling her to leave immediately before “he” sees her. The Beast then shows up, telling Belle that Maurice will be serving a life sentence for stealing the rose because this is basically what happened to him. Belle offers to take his place, but Maurice tells her to leave. She’s allotted one minute alone with him in the cell to say goodbye, though it takes some convincing for Beast to allow it. Before she departs, she pushes Maurice out of the cell and closes the door on herself, taking his spot as prisoner. Beast accepts this and drags Maurice away, with Maurice promising to come back for her. Sometime after, Lumière opens the cell door for her and introduces himself. She freaks out and hits him with a chair but is quickly calmed down by his explanations, as well as Cogsworth’s. Next, they give Belle a tour of the castle but make it known to not enter the West Wing. She’s shown to her room and meets other alive objects along the way like former opera singer turned armoire in Madame de Garderobe (Audra McDonald).

Back in the village, LeFou cheers up Gaston, who’s still pissed about Belle turning him down, with a song praising his abilities. Everyone in the bar joins in on it. After it’s over, Maurice barges in to try and get someone to help him save Belle from the Beast, though nobody there believes his story. Gaston, realizing Maurice can help him get closer to Belle, accepts Maurice’s proposal and asks him to lead them to the castle.

Back at the castle, everyone’s preparing dinner for two, and the Beast walks in. He’s not happy with everyone treating his prisoner so nicely. Gently, Lumière explains to Beast how she might be their last chance to break the curse, so Beast should try to at least charm her to push things in the right direction. Behind her closed door, he goes and demands she come to dinner, though he says it in a much nicer way after all the objects push for it. Belle, who’s already trying to escape out the window, shouts back that she’d rather starve than eat with him. He flips out and leaves. However, after he goes back to his chambers, he looks into his magic mirror to see what Belle is doing. He sees how scared she looks, and this seems to affect him. Right after, he sees another petal fall from the enchanted rose.

The sweet and motherly teapot in Mrs. Potts goes to Belle’s room, along with Chip, and they praise her for her bravery, with Garderobe agreeing. The servants decide to make dinner for her, despite Beast saying she can’t eat unless it’s with him. In doing so, they have a grand old time following Lumière leading another song and dance number. That night, she sneaks into the West Wing and finds the enchanted rose, but Beast runs in and screams at her. This scares the hell out of Belle, and she runs away with Philippe, though the pack of wolves come after her. After she falls off the horse and is cornered, Beast shows up and fights them all off but is badly wounded. Though this is Belle’s shot to leave, she sees the injured creature and helps him back to the castle, with all signs pointing to Belle softening the unlikable Beast. Meanwhile, Maurice leads Gaston and LeFou to a dead end in the forest but still tries to convince the tiresome Gaston they are close to the Beast. Eventually, Gaston flips out on him because he doesn’t believe in Maurice’s claims anyways and admits that the only reason he went along with this whole thing was to get his blessing to marry Belle. Maurice tells him he will never marry her, so Gaston knocks him out with a punch, ties him up, and lays him against a tree as wolf bait, hoping Belle would then flock to him instead because she needs someone to take care of her.

There’s a lot going on here, and Belle is the key to it all. Will she be the one to break the curse? Can she make Beast a loving person again?

My Thoughts:

I hate how Disney is remaking all of their classic animated films. I can’t stand it. From a company that prides themselves on creativity, imagination, colorful characters, personalities, and stories from all walks of life, remaking something is the laziest thing you can do, especially remaking it to the point where it’s almost EXACTLY the same thing but presented in a different style. They’re basically banking on people watching it anyway because it’s a known property. They’ll assume it will do well because people are afraid of new ideas and prefer comforting nostalgia. What pisses me off even more is that they’re right. This live-action adaptation of one of Disney’s greatest animated films in Beauty and the Beast made over a billion dollars worldwide. Considering this is almost a shot-for-shot copy of the 1991 film, this is frustrating as hell. Why are you guys watching this?

Great, now there will be more remakes to come.

At least 2010’s Alice in Wonderland tried something new. This 2017 version of Beauty and the Beast is a total retread.

It’s literally the same fucking movie but somehow thirty minutes longer. First of all, how the fuck did they even do that? Second of all, why would I want to see a longer version of almost the exact same story made thirty years before? The old Beauty and the Beast is better in every category. I can’t stress that enough. Not only is it better paced, but the versions of the characters are just flat out better. Robby Benson, who only provided the voice of the Beast in the animated film, did a much better job than Dan Stevens did in his motion-captured performance. He captured both sides of the Beast’s personality to perfection. Stevens just didn’t have it in him to pull off anything remotely close to it. Also, oddly enough, the animated movie made Beast look a lot more intimidating. This should’ve been the one thing the live-action version did better, but they managed to fail at that too. It’s not that this Beast looked cuddly or anything, but he wasn’t the monster he should’ve looked like. He’s supposed to be this massive, overbearing presence onscreen. Here, he’s only a few inches taller than Emma Watson’s Belle. Keep in mind that Watson is 5’5”. That means, at most, the Beast in this movie is maybe 5’8” to 5’10”, depending on the angle they film. That is hardly “beastly”. In the animated film, he was huge compared to her, and it made sense. Because of his size, Belle became a stronger character because she was still pretty fearless when matched up against him in heated arguments.

In this remake, it honestly felt like this Prince was more of a bitter person because of his height, rather than the fact that he’s half-animal.

They just presented him so much better in the old film in every way. Even the character’s design was a thousand times better. In the 1991 film, he was a lot tougher too. He kicked some major ass and was presented like a no-nonsense fighter early on, so when he lost his drive before Gaston and the village stormed the castle, it meant a lot more because you know he could destroy these people in an instant if he had his love by his side. That’s how you know how badly he was affected by Belle. In this travesty of a remake, he’s sort of a little bitch. All he does is complain. He’s not frightening with it either. He’s just a dick. I couldn’t take him seriously at all. When they added a solo song for the Beast to sing to himself, I lost it. He also got his ass kicked by those wolves early on in the movie. So, when he went toe-to-toe with Gaston, not only did he not look like the fighter he should’ve been, but he (again) got his ass kicked for a majority of the fight. You’re telling me the audience is supposed to be afraid of this guy? I don’t buy it for a second. Also, what was up with the castle falling apart in the big climactic fight at the end? Every step those two were taking, something was crumbling or breaking down off some part of the castle. It became almost comical at one point.

What the hell was that castle made out of? Plywood?

The same could be said about Gaston. In this film, Luke Evans clearly understood what the character was about, but he just wasn’t the guy for it. He didn’t look natural in the role. It looked like he got his stuff from the costume department and started acting. He didn’t have the “action hero”, larger-than-life quality look that the animated figure had. He didn’t have the essence of Gaston down, though you can tell he did his homework on trying to be like him as much as possible. He just needed to be much bigger in personality and literal size. Luke Evans wasn’t terrible in the role, but he was definitely a step behind the animated version. You’re telling me this average-sized dude eats five dozen eggs a day? Get out of here! Josh Gad was the right choice to play LeFou because he does kind of resemble the animated version of the character. Unfortunately, he wasn’t as funny as he thought he was being. However, I will say that I loved the twist of him becoming a good guy when he’s needed the most. This might have been one of the very few improvements this live-action version did better than the original because even in the original, I thought LeFou’s role should’ve been bigger. Other positives revolve around little story details. For instance, I liked how they explained that along with everyone being cursed, the enchantress also erased the neighboring village’s memories of the Prince’s existence. This was something I always wondered about in the original because the castle isn’t that far from the village, so how does not a single person know about this place beforehand? This added spell from the enchantress made everything make sense.

Furthermore, having the household objects explain that every day they become less human and become closer to the object they are currently, is a nice added stress that gives us an extra level of seriousness for us to understand the gravity of the situation. When it actually happens, it does feel like a big moment.

Even with the situation being a lot more important for the objects this time around, the character designs were awful. The idea is to make them look a lot more realistic but by doing this, the characters lost their likability and distinct looks that made them such memorable characters in the original. This was especially true with Lumière and Cogsworth, two characters VITAL to the first film that felt like afterthoughts in this one. Kevin Kline’s performance as the good-hearted Maurice is the only thing that I can straight up say, character-wise, was much better in this live-action adaptation. He plays the old man well and his plight to help Belle, along with the close bond he has with his daughter, feels very loving and inspiring. Maurice becomes a much more important part to the film this time around compared to the character just being a goofball that needs saving in the animated version. There’s nothing wrong with that per say, but here, the character is treated much better and is a lot more important to the overall story, mostly because of Kline’s devotion to making it that way. The only part I found frustrating with him was that there was this unnecessary subplot of Belle wanting to know what happened to her mother because Maurice never told her. It’s not like she was mad about it, she was just interested in knowing what happened to her. Then, there’s this scene where Beast shows Belle some enchanted book where she can go anywhere in the world, so she chooses to go to Paris when she was just a baby.

Apparently, her mother was dying from the plague so to protect Belle, Maurice had to take her away from her mother and move as she died. Now, this backstory was somewhat interesting, but there’s no reason why they wasted so much time in showing us this when it changed the movie in no way shape or form. Think about it, if this scene or added subplot was omitted, how different would this movie be?

This could’ve easily been inserted as a throwaway line as one of the characters confides in the other. There was no need for it to be laid out in the manner it was. Later on, Belle tells Maurice that she understands now why they left her mother, and Maurice is grateful for her understanding. Why does this even matter at this point? Also, why is the simple fact that Belle’s mother died from the plague too much for Maurice to just tell Belle? She’s a grown woman. I’m sure she can handle this type of news now. It’s not like there was some embarrassing thing that happened to her that Maurice couldn’t bear to tell Belle. The plague is a pretty good fucking reason as to why they had to leave Belle’s mother. Also, there was never a point where I questioned Maurice’s motives as Belle’s father in this film, or the animated one. He always did what was best for Belle, and she knows this. Belle never questions him either, so why does she suddenly want to know about her mother that badly? Why does she have to go out of her way to say, “Okay, now I understand you”. This whole thing should’ve just been removed because we gained nothing from it, other than more minutes added to the run time.

All things considered, Emma Watson was the right choice to play Belle. She doesn’t have the charisma of Paige O’Hara, nor the singing voice, but if I were to pick any known actor to play the innocent but headstrong Belle, it would be Waston. She looks like the character and has the feistiness needed for it. She’s very pure and has that understated, good-hearted quality about her. It’s what Belle was always written to be, so it’s clear Watson was the woman for the job. With her being the main character, this was an important thing to get right. This correct decision was big enough to save this film to make it passable entertainment, in terms of movies made entirely for nostalgia purposes.

This live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast has impressive visuals, some funny moments, some nice tweaks, and still possesses the heart of the original, but it’s just not enough to warrant its existence. Besides admirable work by Emma Watson and Kevin Kline, there was nothing in this movie that made it worth watching over the animated classic. This remake is still okay, it just doesn’t do anything to change my mind on how I feel about the original. It’s very obviously the worse version of the two, despite having a two hundred-million-dollar budget.

I guess if you’ve never watched the original, you might appreciate this movie much more but…

…how have you not seen the original?

Fun Fact: In a deleted scene, Stephen Merchant plays a servant that was turned into a toilet. Could you imagine having to be an enchanted toilet during medieval times? That is hilarious. Why did they delete this scene?