Movie Review: Beauty and the Beast

The iconic French fable Beauty and the Beast has survived almost three centuries, two world wars, countless generational shifts and the first few months of a Donald Trump presidency.

It is basically the Stonehenge of content: neither environmental elements nor man-made sabotage (cough Beastly cough) can diminish it.

Which is to say, an underwhelming remake of its most famous big screen telling won’t put the nail in its coffin.

Bill Condon, director of Dreamgirls and the bonkers final Twilight movies, leads the charge on Disney’s live-action do-over, using the studio’s 1991 animated musical as a template.

(The screenplay is credited to Stephen Chbosky and Evan Spiliotopoulos, suggesting one of them was in charge of pausing the DVD to allow the other to properly transcribe each scene. Kidding, Each writer worked separately. They must have just typed very quickly.)

Disney’s last Beauty and the Beast became the first ever animated feature to receive a Best Picture nomination at the Academy Awards. Only something special could successfully break that ceiling. And as pleasant and faithful as Condon’s take is, ‘something special’ is not a phrase it brings to mind. He makes flesh what was previously just cartoon, yet that doesn’t mean it gets the blood pumping.

Emma Watson stars as Belle, a young Frenchwoman in a small provincial village full of small-minded residents who are puzzled by her desire to read books and not be touched, ever, by the dashing, emotionally-bankrupt Gaston (Luke Evans). In the opening scene, Belle cavorts around the gussied-up soundstage insisting there “must be more” in her Paris-by-way-of-Oxfordshire accent. You can’t help but wonder if she’s imagining La La Land, which Watson passed over to star in this instead.

Elsewhere, on the edges of Belle’s hamlet, a grizzled Beast (Dan Stevens) lives in isolation with his cutlery. Formerly a prince, a witch’s curse has left him horned and covered in hair, and his staff turned into all-singing, all-dancing furniture. They try to keep it light.

When Belle’s roaming father (Kevin Kline) winds up the Beast’s prisoner after venturing off his regular path, Belle insists on taking her dad’s place. The Beast complies, and Belle finds herself condemned to his castle, fawned over by the candelabra, Lumiere (Ewan McGregor), a talking clock, Cogsworth (Ian McKellan), and a cockney teapot, Mrs. Potts (Emma Thompson), each hoping that Belle will melt the Beast’s heart and break the curse that has damned them to a life of home furnishing.

There are worse ways to pass an eternity than by hearing appealing actors (including Broadway legend Audra McDonald, as a wardrobe, and Book of Mormon’s Josh Gad, as Gaston’s sidekick LeFou) sing Alan Menken’s tried-and-tested tunes. The marquee number “Be Our Guest” remains unimpeachable; however, the CGI overload of Condon’s staging does render this whole ‘live action’ element somewhat pointless. Emma Watson is a cheerfully dynamic, determined performer, though there’s little fun in watching her grin at a table while a computer-generated candlestick flings soup at her. It’s all rather weightless.

Stevens, a graduate of Downton Abbey now doing impressive work on the mind-bending TV show Legion, offers his Beast a tender, human voice. It’s a part that has swallowed other actors whole (literally). His Beast is the film’s best argument for its fixation on turning everything to pixels.

For this Beauty and the Beast to leave any impression at all, Disney no doubt hopes you’ve largely forgotten their 1991 version—and maybe that’s not unreasonable, given that a full 26 years have passed. In that way, it’s an equal to 2016’s surprise sensation The Jungle Book; a family flick that hits all the familiar beats, demonstrates new updates to filmmaking technology and shaves off any previously un-woke elements that simply wouldn’t fly in the 21st century.

To that point, Disney deserves some credit for featuring its first openly gay character here: LeFou. (Though, really? Its first?) The decision has seen the movie receive a 16+ rating in Russia and an outright banning in one Alabama theatre. Many will be dumbfounded that an international incident could result from such a modest suggestion. (“Openly” gay is a hugely generous description of LeFou.) More shocking is the actor’s uncharacteristically swept-back bouffant. I’ll accept a romantic relationship between a giant man-buffalo and a woman, but Josh Gad with a fringe? It goes against the very laws of nature.

3/5

In cinemas March 23, 2017. Rated PG for mild themes and violence.

Photo: Disney