Beauty and the Beast (2017)

Truly Dreadful Film

Strong and Moving!

Let's be realistic.

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

1.5/4I thoroughly enjoyed Cinderella (2015) and was expecting Beauty and the Beast to do its respective predecessor justice. I'm going to just tell you my personal opinion: It didn't come close. Stick with the cartoon from 1991.To start off on a positive note, the visuals are absolutely stunning. The cinematography is lush and the set is total perfection. It truly is some of the best eye-candy I've ever seen in a movie (and I've seen a lot of movies ladies and gentlemen). Direction screenplay, and plot all seem to take a backseat to production. My answer to that? Go tour a real castle.Emma Watson makes for a great Belle, and she's a great misfit bookworm princess. Also, she fits in to the Parisian born theme of the character perfectly, as she is Parisian in real life. However, everyone else is completely miscast, especially Luke Evans as Gaston. The overly cocky and somewhat fun character is simply overly cocky in this movie. How much fun can you have with one mood? Anyone? C'mon, Luke, you aren't even acting like you're interested in Belle at all. Josh Gad is no good as the gay LeFou. With all of the hype and controversy Disney made of LeFou, you'd think they'd do a homosexual character right? Wrong. They never let you forget about his sexual orientation, and they remind you even at times when it's totally unimportant to the story. Gad's character could never develop beyond Gaston's inferior/cronie/admirer.At the end of the day, this movie felt too true to the original. When you try to mimic and old glory, it never comes out just how you'd want it. Aside from the opening number (the song about how odd Belle is) none of the other songs have a lasting impact. "Be My Guest" was good, but the CGI was ridiculous to me, as they didn't even animate the atmosphere of most of the song. Some songs (like Evermore) have about 15 seconds of screen time, and others (like Gaston) were completely out of wack due to Luke Evan's eye-rolling preformance.Is this a bad movie? No. Is this a good movie? No. Did it live up to my expectations? No. Is the cartoon better? Yes. Would I ever watch this live-action version again? Probably not.

There are so many bad reviews for this film that I'm wondering if I saw the same film. I read all of the negative reviews and all I can say is, this is not the 1991 animated Disney version, GET OVER IT! I enjoyed this film and isn't that the point to get enjoyment? I think some of not all of these negative reviewers are just haters who before even seeing the film had their minds made up to trash it and then found ways to do it. Fiactorrstly, yes, I agree that Emma Watson was miscast. Her singing isn't horrible but it isn't up to par to be the heroine of a musical. Ewan MacGregor is a very good singer (see Moulin Rouge) but his version of Be Our Guest is a little flat compared to Jerry Orbach. In his defense, Jerry Orbach started out as a Broadway musical actor, MacGregor did not. That's a big pair of shoes to fill. His accent was not too bad which is one of the biggest complaints I saw. He sounded authentically French which is to not do a parody of Maurice Chevalier. This is what most actors do including what Jerry Orbach did. I thought Dan Stevens was good as the beast but the CGI make-up was a mistake, it would have been better to use traditional prosthetics. Josh Gad was very funny and stole most of the scenes he was in. The change in Gaston from conceited fool to conceited villain was also not a good change. Unlike most of the reviewers, I thought the CGI effects were good and really enjoyed what they did during Be Our Guest. Could the film have been better, perhaps, but it was not deserving of the horrible things people had to say about it. It certainly deserved better than 1 or 2 stars. If you don't believe me, look at the Metascore which is based on professional film critics. It is green and a fairly high score.

Not sure why a lot of people had massive problems with it. I thought the re-imagining was done well enough, and in the least was a good ode to the original. I still would prefer the original, and the prince could have been handsomer, the entirely CG beast better, and a few other nit picks, but all in all good to watch just once, then return to the 2D classic.

I was very disappointed. It was too slow and serious with phony dancing and unemotional characters who don't read the lines in the form of a sentence or lyric very well. They're pausing and acting so laid back at the emotions in the movie. The best parts were the scenes that didn't copy the far superior cartoon.