Stick with the original animated version

Rating: 5/10 (8 July 2017)

The moral of this film should be: if you've done it right in the first place, don't remake it.
The original animated movie was an all-time classic, with great music and fine animation. There was no need to remake it, other than that the Disney corporation is raking in billions turning all of their animated classics into mostly mediocre live-action pics.
It's impossible to watch this new version without comparing it to the animated original, especially since it's basically the same movie, including the songs, simply re-done scene-by-scene as live- action. And alas, the new version pales by comparison at every turn.
It turns out that not everything in an animated film translates well when rendered in more realistic CGI. The Beast's living furniture, for instance, which is charming in the original animated form, comes across as rather alien & creepy in CGI. And so does the Beast. We're used to seeing walking, talking animals in cartoons, but seen in life-like CGI, it forces the viewer to confront the reality of what it would be like for a human girl to actually get physically involved with what is basically a large, standing animal with horns. They even messed with music, adding at least two mediocre new songs in place of the wonderful music from the original version. Why?
It isn't a terrible movie, and it has its moments, I suppose, but it simply has no reason to exist, other than to be compared unfavorably to the original. And to make money.
The film made $175 on its opening weekend, before the built-in audience even knew what they were getting themselves into, and the movie wound up grossing half a billion in the U.S. alone. So you can bet that Disney will keep cranking out these inferior, live-action versions, whether they're artistic failures or not.