Good, but ultimately pointless

Rating: 7/10 (17 March 2017)

First off, I'm not really sure why this movie had to be made. Watching the trailers I suspected that it was by and large a shot- for-shot remake, and... yeah, it pretty much was.
The Beast himself is far more expressive here. The CG is really good, he comes across the most different of the characters (except Gaston's sidekick, who's now apparently dealing with the fact he's in love with Gaston, but it's all very minor stuff). He seems more human, and while it's surprisingly easier for me to relate to him in this version, I worry that it might be at the expense of the story's message. The original beast looked like a wild animal, covered completely in hair, almost always hunched over. Here he's often standing straight, and because he doesn't have much hair covering his face he seems more human. I liked the idea that you have to judge him based on his actions and words rather than his looks, so I feel he should looks less human.
Emma Watson was a pretty good Bell here, too. She didn't really get anything new to do that the original didn't, but she works extremely well with what she's given. Oh, and she can also sing, apparently. It's kind of funny that it never occurred to me until I sat down in the theater that I had no idea if she COULD sing, but once the first song began I was no longer worried.
The curse is more fleshed out here, which is nice. We learn that the servants will turn into ordinary appliances if the curse isn't broken, losing all sentience. Compared to the original where they didn't seem particularly unhappy with their lives, this gives it more weight. We also learn that everybody outside the castle was made to forget they all even existed, and see that the path to the castle was blocked by a (possibly magical) tree.
There was a subplot with the enchantress who cursed them all to begin with returning at the end of it all, which I sort of liked. I always found myself considering her to be the real villain of the original film as she essentially cursed a little boy for not letting a total stranger stay in his magnificent palace for a night, so seeing that she made sure to show up at the end of the allotted time to see how things played out made sense. That said, it turns out she apparently spent the last 10 or 20 years just sorta hanging out in the local village, which if I'm being honest is really, really dumb.
There was also another subplot that literally went nowhere in which Bell laments never having known her mother. They try to link this to the Beast also never knowing his mother and how their fathers treated them very differently. I was honestly worried they were going to combine these two different subplots and shout out 'SURPRISE! Bell's mother was the enchantress ALL ALONG!' but fortunately they didn't do that. It's like finding the original had half an hour of deleted scenes that someone just decided to edit into the movie.
It is really hard to talk about the characters with this movie because this whole thing is so close to the original in it's script, music, and appearance that I find myself associating some character behaviors and motives with their original cartoon version. In the original movie Gaston was one of my favorite Disney villains, and while he's still fun here, he seems less villainous. The original Gaston was an egocentric dumb-dumb. He never really made any villainous acts until partway through the movie when he deliberately schemed to have Bell's father locked away in an insane asylum unless she agrees to marry him. It's a calculated move to get what he wants, and he has plenty of time to turn away but chooses not to. Here he just seems to react in the moment; when he's told by Bell's father that he can't marry her, he punches the man out in anger and leaves him in the woods. When he's confronted about this by some angry townspeople, he decides to have him committed to cover up his act. When Bell shows up and reveals that there IS a Beast and her father is NOT crazy, Gaston then insists that she's only saying this because the Beast placed a curse on her to say these things, and they have to all raid the castle to stop him from cursing them, too. Again, it's all reactive. It wasn't pre-meditated, which makes him less menacing and more...well, kinda wimpy, actually.
Also, Gaston goes out like a bitch. O.G Gaston fell to his death because he cowardly attacked the Beast's back and was thrown from the castle. It's his own cowardice, dishonorable tactics, and unwillingness to relent that leads him to get himself killed. Here he shoots at the beast, and the bridge he's on just sorta... breaks.
I know I mostly talk about the bad things here, but that's the whole problem. There is a LOT to like about this movie, but unfortunately it's all the stuff we've seen before. The new and/or changed stuff is mostly forgettable or mismanaged, but it's largely overshadowed by the stuff we know and love from the original. The music is still memorable, the characters still lovable, and the story is still one of the greats. If you liked the first one and don't mind the fact that it's trying it's damned hardest to be as close to the first as possible, then you'll like this one, too. If you don't particularly care to watch the same movie all over again, though, then just save your money.