Fine if superfluous.

Rating: 6/10 (19 March 2017)

Recently Disney has become fixated on remaking, rebooting, or re- imaging their older films. This film is the third live action remake of one of Disney's classic animated films. So this is a remake of an animated adaptation of a french fairy tale (working title). If you haven't seen the classic animated film or just don't remember it the story goes as follows: Lady falls in love with monster. Of course there's underlying theme's and messages to take away but that's basically the story. It's simple and easy to understand. This is probably the greatest strength of the animated film. The story isn't over burdened by much else, it's just a love story with whimsical characters and house hold appliances that sing.
It's in these details where this remake falls short. While it's essentially a shot for shot remake of the original there are a few things added. And every single thing added to this that didn't exist in the original feel so out of place and overly convoluted that it's hard to take them seriously. There's an entire subplot added to this film where Belle is attempting to find out how her mother died.
It only comes up a few times and it's not really even written into the story. We have the original story and, all of a sudden, Belle discovers that her mom and dad lived in a windmill in Paris. Like, why? Why is this even included in the story? It doesn't add any depth to her or her father. It basically is just there to say that her dad loves her, which I think we can all reasonably infer already.
There are various other added scenes and all of them feel roughly the same as this one. They all come from nowhere, add nothing, and then are completely forgotten about because they serve absolutely no purpose. This is where remakes become frustrating. On one hand, you want to see something new but if you go in a completely new direction people complain. And if you make a shot for shot remake, people complain.
There's this tiny gray area in between these two extremes where a remake is almost acceptable. Look at 'The Force Awakens' for reference. While that film was essentially just a remake of 'A New Hope' there were new characters, a new threat, new environments, and new ideas being presented. 'Beauty and the Beast' falls just shy of being a shot for the shot remake by simply adding a new song or two and a few scenes.
It feels like the same movie but with the deleted scenes added in. That's both the biggest flaw and greatest accomplishment of this film. It's obnoxious to watch a worse version of the same movie but where this movie works best is in the scenes that are pulled straight from the cartoon. Seeing this massive budget bring to life the jaw- dropping castle and characters was really neat.
As much as I dislike Disney movies they do know how to utilize a budget. The sets, costumes, makeup, and CG all look spectacular. There were many scenes where I was left in awe of how good this movie looked and how much effort was seemingly put into making it look that good. And this is where all my respect for the film goes. They did an absolutely brilliant job bringing the cartoon to life.
But that's, unfortunately, all this film is good for. It doesn't have an identity of its own. It wants to be the original but also wants to be its own thing and ends up being neither. There are some beautiful sets, costumes, and inspired recreations of the classics songs yet the film falters in nearly every other way. Its story is clouded by illogical and overly convoluted subplots that just sort of dead end and add nothing. While I am still strongly against remaking classic films, I can say that out of the three live action cartoon remakes we have gotten this is the best, but not by much. Just, make new things, please.