Enjoyable, but with a few pressing issues...

Rating: 7/10 (13 April 2017)

With Beauty & the Beast being one of my all time favourite animated Disney movies, I was so excited for a very long time for the live action film to come out. When I went to the cinema to watch it I could barely contain myself!
The film itself is enjoyable. The plot stays very much to the original with a few changes, such as a bit more back story for Belle and Beast, and Maurice not being an inventor (why? I'm not really sure). The back stories were intriguing, however I felt that they did not really add much to the film or plot, and felt like they were almost thrown in there as a last minute thing to fill in screen time.
I feel I need to talk about the musical numbers in the film. A lot of them were fabulous, Be Our Guest was hugely pleasing both aesthetically and acoustically, and Gaston was brilliant - along with Josh Gad and Luke Evans really being the highlight of the cast in general for me. Belle (the song in the village) was done quite well, however Emma Watson's singing voice generally throughout the film is rather flat and uninspiring compared to Paige O'Hara's performance in the 1991 version... plus some of the autotuning particularly in this number was so glaringly obvious it was almost laughable. Something There was a big let down for me... it really lacked the fun and intrigue of the original. Beauty & the Beast was lovely and I really enjoyed it, though it probably will still never compare to Angela Lansbury for me!
The musical score in general is fabulously put together and arranged. There were a couple of new numbers put in, all of which I liked except for the Beast's song 'Evermore' which I felt was just awfully written and really did not capture the Beast's doom and heartbreak at that point in the film.
The acting is generally okay... As I say, Luke Evans and Josh Gad were really the highlights of the cast for me. Emma Watson is beautiful and could have added so much more magic to the role of Belle - however, it just felt to me that she was literally just reading the script, and following the director to the point where she was not adding any of her own flare to the part; it all feels very stiff and wooden. Dan Stevens as the Beast was good enough, however unfortunately this is marred by the design and appearance of the Beast, which is really truly quite awful for a 2017 release with such a huge budget for special effects and CGI - which as other reviewers have stated, is quite distracting - same with the wolves... especially after such breath taking CGI and visuals in The Jungle Book.
The castle staff were all pleasant enough (except for Chip, I don't know who did the casting for him but that kid can't act at all), and contrary to some others' opinion, I though the CGI on them was quite good. Kevin Kline did a great job as Maurice and I really enjoyed his performance.
Overall, a pleasant watch and I did enjoy the film. I just feel that it could have had more done to inject some real magic, like the original, into the mix.