Beauty and the Beast - Spoiler Free Review

Rating: 4/10 (14 September 2018)

Beauty and the Beast review - (impossible to spoil for anyone who's seen the original), but this is going to be long as hell, because I have a lot to rant about, so be warned.
It's no great secret that the original Beauty and the Beast is my favourite animated film of all time; I kept the VHS and the DVD is displayed promptly above my desk, along with films like Shawshank Redemption and Mystic River, so I'll admit, even if this remake had been good, it probably would have had a hard time winning me over. So I openly admit my bias. However, as I was sitting in the theater, I kept asking myself the question, would I be enjoying this, even if I hadn't seen the original, and my unfortunate answer was simply - no. So, for now, let's look at this film as a standalone, we put the original out of our minds, and we just look at this as if it's the first adaptation. The first, and most obvious problem, Emma Watson can't sing; I can't emphasize that enough, she can't sing. Sure she holds the notes (most the time) but it's all completely safe and phoned in, kind of like watching Idols and seeing one of those dull performances where the judges feedback comes down to something like, "your voice is okay, you have no charisma" and that's not only her singing, that's her whole performance. Belle should have spunk, she should be hard headed but still likable, not fitting into her surrounding, but still accepting of the townsfolk and the simple lives they live - this rendition of Belle is simply Emma Watson playing Emma Watson, and it fails. The only chemistry she has with anyone on screen is Kevin Kline as her father, a character I liked because he completely did his own thing, it's like he never watched the original film, because this is a completely new character and it worked, and he was likable and sympathetic and: ORIGINAL - sorry, I know I said I'm not going to compare immediately to the original, but I have to now - even though Emma Watson is trying to do her own thing, at the same time she is still trying to duplicate the original animated character, but doing it badly, and somehow showing far less emotion than that animated character ever did. And yes, I mentioned emotions, so let's get to one of my biggest gripes with this film, the objects (Cogsworth, Lumiere, Mrs. Potts etc)...you know in Thomas the Tank Engine when the train's mouths don't move and it's really uncomfortable to watch, well picture that, but give them less emotion, and you still won't have a clue how uncomfortable I felt watching these things. Now, don't get me wrong, I get what they were trying to do - the flat faces with the flat eyes, mouths, etc...they're going for a more realistic approach, sacrificing emotion for realism...my question is WHY???? This is freaken Beauty and the Beast, a fairy tale, I think viewers will forgive you if your content doesn't look super realistic, but at least has personality, but no, you decide to base everything on the voice work - and here's the clicker, the voice work isn't all that great either. We have Sir Ian McKellen, a brilliant actor, a voice anyone can identify, and with not even an attempt to change it, it's distracting as hell. Ewan McGregor, the only character who's at least trying to do an Italian accent, but half the time it fails and it's awkward to listen to. I will give some credit to Emma Thompson and Haydn Gwynne, because at least their voices matched the characters and sounded natural, but again, with these deadite looking pieces of furniture - they had nothing to work with. Now I'm going to start making references to the original, and no, in this case - that's not unfair, the songs are the same, the dialogue's the same: this is like Gus Van Sant's remake of Psycho if they had told a feminist to do a slight rewrite of the script, keep it basically identical, but just different enough so that it can look like we tried. First a positive: Luke Evans as Gaston - I liked this version of him, no actually I preferred this version of him, while in the original Gaston was just unlikeable from the get go, here they actually tried giving him some character - and it almost worked. That scene in the market, right in the beginning, in the original Gaston approaches Belle and condescends her immediately, it establishes their relationship and we understand why she finds him repulsive, here - he talks to her gently, he attempts a softer approach, even shows interest in what she likes - and I sat there thinking, why is she being so cruel to him, thus far he's done nothing to deserve it. So you think after she rejects him he's going to walk away upset and mad at her, but no, he talks about her to LeFou and he does so in a respective manner, saying really nice things about her - frankly, at this point in the movie, I was on Gaston's side, he was nicer, more respectful - frankly he could do BETTER than Belle. Even his relationship with LeFou is improved, he actually shows an appreciation for his friend and is generally nice to him, unlike the original where he kinda just comes forth as a bully. So about halfway through the movie, the writers abruptly remember that Gaston is supposed to be the bad guy, so they do a complete 180 with the character and simply turn him back into the original, making me wonder if I'm still watching the same movie. This pissed me off almost more than Belle's character because they actually did have something going with this one. Next, the songs, now there are a few new songs in this film...yay...the problem is I don't recall a single one of them, and never will any of them reach sing along Disney status, the other songs, the original songs, they're all still there - not the same quality, because again, Emma Watson can't sing, but at least you could think back to the original and remember how hearing them the first time made you feel. The new songs kind of made me think of James and the Giant Peach, entire songs added to explain things that could literally just be explained in one line of dialogue and it not only felt unnecessary, it felt out of place. Now let's look at the dialogue, this is what happens when you take the original script, you run it through a Thesaurus and you pick the longest possible option for each sentence because that's what they did. News flash to the writers: taking existing dialogue and making it more drawn out does not necessarily make it better, and in this case, it makes it worse. The Beast in the original film, upon his introduction his lines were short but terrifying, he looked like a legitimate threat, this abomination, constantly bickering with Belle and Emma Watson talking to him as if she's making another speech about woman's right, it's painful to sit through. Basically, it was like the writers didn't understand the source material they were working from, little things like the scene where Belle and the Beast are playing in the snow; in the original, that song is sung as an inner monologue, making not only us, but them realize that they are secretly developing feelings for each other, here they belt it out like a scene from 'The Sound of Music', no inner monologue, they just sing it as if the other won't hear them 5 feet away. The moment in the original, after the Beast releases Belle and Cogsworth asks him why, and he answers "because I love her", that line was important, because he was not only admitting it to them, he was finally admitting it to himself...here they give it to Mrs. Potts, even the scene with him giving her the library, I guess I didn't hate the spin they gave it here, but in the original this was his moment where he had completely put himself aside and wanted to show her that he cares about her...here he kinda does it too, but in that nonchalant manner that still kinda makes him look like an arrogant prick. I could literally still rant on for hours about everything I disliked about this film, but I doubt anyone is still reading, so let me just conclude by saying...I hated this damn remake, really really hated it, but: the girl I saw it with loved it, she loved it so much that I actually felt bad ripping into it after, and watching her face light up with excitement at every awful scene was, to me, much more entertaining than the actual movie...so maybe, based on that, I'll say guys: you're going to hate this, girls: you might not...but frankly, see it anyway, I actually want to hear your thoughts. Am I just being petty? I really want to hear your feedback, and actually, I'm hoping you say I'm wrong because this was still a pretty movie: the set work, the art direction, this is Oscar worthy stuff and it's beautiful to look at, so I know they put effort into it and I almost feel bad ripping it apart as badly as I did, so if you find something redeeming here, tell me, I want to hear you out.