"Beauty and the Beast" is a faithful, entertaining and beautiful live-action rendition of the beloved Disney animated classic.

Rating: 8/10 (16 March 2017)

Most people are aware that Disney's 2017 musical fantasy "Beauty and the Beast" (PG, 2:09) is a live-action remake of the studio's 1991 animated classic, but what is not as well known is just how successful that 1991 version was – or how long the story has been around. According to Wikipedia, university researchers in Europe have traced the story's origins back 4,000 years! A little more recently, it's likely that the tale (which seems like it just may be nearly as old as time) was influenced by the true story of Petrus Gonsalvus, a 16th century Spaniard who suffered from Hypertrichosis (extreme hair growth), but married a Parisian woman, fathered seven children (four of whom inherited his disease) and lived among the French nobility. Regardless of its original source, the story was first published in France in 1740 and, over the next three centuries, was revised, rewritten and adapted, both in print and then as performance art, including about a dozen television shows and about the same number of feature films. Probably the most famous cinematic version was Disney's 1991 animated musical which won Oscars for its score and its title song (and was nominated for Best Picture – the very first animated feature so honored) and made almost half a billion dollars worldwide. That 1991 film incorporates several elements and plot points from the story's early published versions. The 2017 version does the same – and serves as a very faithful live-action re-telling of the 1991 classic, with few significant differences.
Emma Watson plays Belle (the character simply referred to as Beauty in most of the earlier versions of the story), a beautiful, kind, intelligent and independent young woman living in the fictional French village of Villeneuve (named after the author who first published the story). Belle lives with her eccentric and devoted widowed father, Maurice (Kevin Kline), who is the only one who understands Belle and accepts her for who she is. While her fellow villagers dismiss her as "odd" for always reading books and dreaming about life and adventures beyond Villeneuve, she is nevertheless being pursued romantically by arrogant former soldier Gaston (Luke Evans), who sees Belle's beauty as at least approaching his own. (To say that Gaston's narcissistic is like saying Donald Trump is kind of proud of his accomplishments.) And not that Gaston's ego needs any boosting, but constantly at his side is LeFou (Josh Gad), who basically serves as Gaston's hype man and who seems jealous of all the local maidens competing for Gaston's attention. Regardless, Gaston wants Belle and Belle wants... nothing to do with Gaston.
Meanwhile, the other character in the film's title is wasting away in a long-forgotten castle deep in the woods outside of Villeneuve. Beast (Dan Stevens) is a former prince who is now a unique fusion of several different wild animals, due to a curse he received from a local enchantress because of his extreme self-centeredness. Trapped in the same curse are his former castle staff, who now exist as anthropomorphic household objects including a candelabra named Lumière (voiced by Ewan McGregor), a clock called Cogsworth (Ian McKellan), a tea pot (Emma Thompson), a harpsicord (Stanley Tucci), a dresser (Audra McDonald) and a feather duster (Gugu Mbatha-Raw). The only way that any (all) of them can be released from the curse is if Beast falls in love and is loved in return, before a rose that was given to Beast as a symbol of the curse loses its last petal. Considering that Beast has grown bitter and mean and no one even knows that he exists, the long-term prospects for this cursed castle don't look good.
Of course, all that changes when these two worlds inevitably collide. (After all, movies simply called "Beast", or "Beauty And" don't sound very interesting, do they?) When Maurice gets lost in the woods on the way back from his annual trip to market, he ends up at Beast's castle, where he takes a rose to bring to Belle and is promptly imprisoned in Beast's dungeon. When Maurice's faithful horse returns to Villeneuve and Belle hops on, she also discovers Beast's castle. She insists on taking her father's place in the dungeon, so Beast throws him out and holds Belle captive. As Maurice struggles to get Gaston (or any of the villagers) to help him rescue Belle (or even to believe his story of a beast living in a castle deep in the woods), Beast's staff insists that Belle be their guest, and they work to convince Beast to be nice enough to her that she might turn out to be the one to break the curse before it's too late.
"Beauty and the Beast" is a faithful, entertaining and beautiful live-action rendition of the beloved Disney animated classic. The 2017 version keeps the time-honored songs from the 1991 film and adds a few new ones. With the advances in CGI since 1991, director Bill Condon and his team are able to replicate and update the look of the animated version. In addition, the great voice work wonderfully complements the vibrant visuals, while the characters' diversity (in terms of race and sexual orientation) also represents an update of sorts. The result of all this is a remake that is every bit as magical and fun as the original. There is little here that's fresh or new, but there's a lot to appreciate and enjoy. "A-"