Beauty and the Beast

[zico]

8/10. A live-action remake of a Disney cartoon musical which stars Emma Watson - what's to like? Surprisingly, quite a lot. All in all, I enjoyed it a lot more than I expected.

The star of the film needs to be young, pretty, feisty and independent, and of the 6 billion women on the planet, it seems there could only be one possible choice for Disney - Emma Watson as a 26 year old bookish teenager, a role where she's had lots of previous experience. A really safe and uninspiring box-office choice, but surely they could have picked a fresh face, as the film's visuals are the real star here.

At the start the film is enjoyable for all the wrong reasons. The Beast starts life as a spoilt young prince in rural France, who holds a grand ball featuring mostly glamorous women, and with Albert Einstein playing the piano, the prince gets cursed by a witch, and, as ever, the curse can only be lifted by finding niceness and love. Next, Emma adopts her trademark self-satisfied smirk for the opening musical number romp in a thoroughly Disneyfied medieval French village (we know it's French because everyone says "bonjour" before talking in English). The inhabitants are surprisingly well-dressed and it's all spotlessly clean except for the appearance of comedy horse dung. It gets better with the arrival of Gaston, the self-regarding simpleton villain, who is very villainous and entertaining, and Disney have Gaston's accomplice/henchman/admirer Le Fou as their first gay character in a children's story, a bold creative step no doubt underpinned by lots of focus groups and profit/loss analysis to several decimal places. (Apparently Disney have lost sales in Malaysia, where gay characters can only be shown in films if they are being punished or repent of their "sin", so the film can't be shown there unless they cut it.)

After the opening schmaltzfest, there's then a good romp of a film with quite a lot of enjoyably witty dialogue, including send-ups of standard plots, and the visuals are really sumptuous throughout. Unfortunately, Beauty (Emma) is far too busy being feisty, independent and Hermione-ish to ever be actually scared of the Beast, and though nominally his prisoner, she's the kind of prisoner that nobody would take back unless they were paid handsomely. Beauty and Beast's developing relationship is quite nicely illustrated through them finding shared interests. Rather than threatening, the Beast sulks rather a lot when Emma is being feisty, and when he sulks, he looks a bit like the Donald's face when meeting world leaders he doesn't like.

The musical set-pieces are mostly spectacular and really well done, often including a hefty dose of self-mockery and film references. There's a fair bit of extra plot compared with the original cartoon, which works pretty well. Emma Thompson does her best ever performance as a teapot with a Cockney accent slightly more consistent than Dick Van Dyke's. Ewan McGregor is a brilliant candlestick. I was tempted to say nobody can hold a candle to him, but of course, they can.

Both kids and adults can enjoy this one.

[todthedog]

Not reached here yet, I am much encouraged by your review, usually MrsT's choice rather than mine, but I'll give it a go. Thanks for posting.

[todthedog]

Not reached here yet, I am much encouraged by your review, usually MrsT's choice rather than mine, but I'll give it a go. Thanks for posting.