Movie : Beauty and the Beast

Cast : Emma Watson as Belle, Dan Stevens as The Prince / Beast
Director: Bill Condon
Music director: Alan Menken
Runtime: 129 minutes
Audience: All ages
Rating : ***

As with the live-action Cinderella, there is some stuff to like here, even if the whole package is a disappointment. Kevin Kline (Ricki and the Flash, My Old Lady) as Belle’s father, Maurice, is as engaging as he always is. Josh Gad (The Angry Birds Movie, Pixels) as Gaston’s sidekick LeFou steals every scene he’s in by embracing the over-the-topness that everyone else is ignoring. Mostly, though, this is an unfortunate example of the fact that what works in a cartoon doesn’t necessarily work in live-action.  Here, I never believed that a beauty fell in love with a beast, even given the expectation that such a thing isn’t supposed to be extraordinary.

Review by Flickfilosopher.com

Beauty and The Beast may not work the same magic as The Jungle Book did for Disney last year. However, it is surely an arresting piece of visual brilliance that has to be seen on big screen to get the full experience. While not all songs work and they make some portions drag, the fairy tale romance is still alive when it comes to every scene featuring Emma Watson and the Beast. Though Beauty and The Beast is a classic tale, it is also a very much needed moral lesson to our glamour obsessed world, that beauty is skin deep. Recommended to watch it in IMAX screens.

Review by Bollywoodlife.com

Disney’s live-action remake of Beauty And The Beast doesn’t need to be dazzlingly original. As we’re told in the most famous song it borrows from the 1991 animated film, this is a “tale as old as time”. Instead, what Dreamgirls director Bill Condon delivers here is two hours of premium nostalgia, decorated with the odd modern flourish. Emma Watson, who reportedly quit La La Land for this film, is perfectly cast as Belle, a forward-thinking young woman who feels constrained by the “provincial life” of her 18th century French village.

Review by NME.com

“Beauty and the Beast,” that “tale as old as time” (or, to pinpoint it, 1740, when the French fairy tale was published), could certainly use a few tweaks. It is, after all, a fable about finding beauty within that ends, curiously, with the once superficial prince falling for a beautiful woman he’s kidnapped, whose name literally means beauty. If you’d like to untangle those ironies, please, be our guest.

Review by charlotteobserver.com

Keeping a checklist of what a remake gets wrong may be a fundamentally pedantic, ungenerous approach to criticism. But it may also be the appropriate one in response to Disney’s ongoing business strategy, which, even with above-average outings like the recent updates of “Cinderella” and “The Jungle Book,” seems increasingly invested in exploiting the audience’s nostalgia. This isn’t the studio’s first enterprise to trade in secondhand pleasures and, certain as the sun rising in the east, it won’t be the last.

Review by Latimes.com

Why? The high points of director Bill Condon’s resume suggest he was the right person for this big-budget remake. The maker of "Gods and Monsters" and "Kinsey" possesses a basic understanding of the musical genre’s building blocks, given his success with “Dreamgirls." And since he made one of the "Twilight" movies, "Breaking Dawn: Part I" (which he himself called "a disaster"), Condon is certainly familiar with the live-action/digital effects mashup requirements. But his new movie is more of a grating disappointment, despite its best supporting turns, human and animatronic.

Review by Arcamax.com

If you loved the original, chances are you’ll love this as well. Yes, seeing real-life actors playing these beloved characters takes a bit of getting used to at first, but once you’ve gotten over it, the film is just as magical as you remember it to be. Watson gives Belle a steely determination that makes her more than just another damsel in distress, while Stevens evokes a good balance of fear and sympathy in the Beast.

Review by Star2.com

My skepticism about the necessity of Disney’s live-action remake of its beloved 1991 animated musical “Beauty and the Beast” lasted, oh, about 90 seconds. The new film’s opening moments include a giant 3D red rose that seemed on the verge of beautifully devouring the audience, the irresistible spectacle of Dan Stevens’ Prince (pre-Beast) sprawled louchely on a gleaming throne as throngs of exquisitely gowned women whirl on a dance floor, and the glorious gilded-bird trill of Audra McDonald’s operatic soprano. It was gorgeous, it was over-the-top to the point of absurdity — and just like that, I was all in.

Review by Seattletimes.com

The bottom line: This gloriously old-fashioned musical with gee-whiz trappings is a dazzling beauty to behold (with enough Rococo gold decor to gild all of Trump’s properties) and is anything but a beastly re-interpretation of a fairy tale as old as time. Also welcome is the more inclusive display of love in its various forms, which go beyond the sweetly awkward courtship between brainy, brave and independent-minded bookworm Belle (Emma Watson, much cherished for her gusty portrayal of Hermione Granger in the eight Harry Potter films) and the cursed prince in the ill-tempered guise of a ram-horned bison-faced creature (Dan Stevens of “Downton Abbey,” whose sensitive blue eyes serve him well amid all his CGI faux-fur trappings).

Review by Rogerebert.com

Watson is an ideal Belle in this wonderful remake that's at once nostalgic and new, bringing to life the musical both for kids and life-long adult fans. Her Belle is relatable and sympathetic, with her curious eyes and aura of clever bookishness and strong-willed personality (Watson was also Hermione Granger, after all!). It turns out Watson can sing well, too; she's no rival to six-time Tony-winning co-star Audra McDonald, who plays Madame Garderobe, but her voice is clear and crisp and full of the longing and wanderlust that Belle conveys so beautifully in Alan Menken's songs. Stevens does a fine job with the Beast, playing up the character's frustration, anger, underlying sadness -- and eventual love -- in his voice and gestures.

Review by Commonsensemedia.org

“Beauty and the Beast” is one of those fairy tales that contains a profound, eternal, even overtly Christian message about the human condition. According to scholars, the story is 4,000 years old, but its modern version comes from a female French writer’s version published in 1740 and abridged and re-worked in the 100 years thereafter. In the most popular modern versions, the story is a metaphorical fairy tale about the archetypal heterosexual relationship between men and women in God’s Creation. As such, it reflects the Christian, biblical ideal of marriage where the love between a man and a woman transforms sinful hearts, especially the “beastly” nature of the male descendants of Adam, the first man.

Review by Movieguide.org

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