Design, great. Character portrayal, not so much.

Rating: 4/10 (3 July 2018)

I didn't bother to see this movie in theaters, because live action movies don't exactly have the best reputation for being as good as their original cartoon versions. Now, I watched the live action not knowing what to expect. I hadn't paid much attention to the trailers, and hadn't heard anything from friends about the movie. However, I was sort of expecting something different from what I'd seen in the original, with the movie having had such a wide budget.
During the first scene in the movie, I could tell right away that this was just going to be an attempt at a copy of the original. Emma Watson (playing Belle) walked down steps into town just as Belle did in the original film. She began singing, and you could hear the terrible auto-tuning right away. It was not pleasant, and sounded way too electronic to stack up to the original. All of the other songs' auto-tuning was highly noticeable as well. There didn't seem to be much life in Emma Watson's character portrayal, as well as many of the others'. Not a great way to kick off a movie.
The movie gets rather boring, to the point where I stopped paying attention to it many times. I had thought that there were going to be more comedic elements between the characters in the film. If there were, they weren't noticeable. It seemed to have a much more serious tone to it than the original that I didn't expect from a Disney film.
Some of the character designs were rather strange; especially Mrs. Pott's. Chip could've added more comedy to the film, but he wasn't featured very much at all. I will say, that like many other reviews, my favorite character design/portrayal was that of Gaston's. I think that went over well since the movie was so serious, and his original tone was a serious one.
Now, not all of it was bad. If you're going for a romantic movie that holds a serious undertone, this is a good one to see. a lot of the scenery is great, and the castle design is wonderful, and the music without the auto-tuning was spectacular. Overall, it wasn't the worst movie I'd seen. It just wasn't what I was expecting. In my opinion, the characters are supposed to make the movie, and that was just kind of flat in this one.