Are they French or British? A film with no identity

Rating: 3/10 (5 October 2017)

'Beauty & The Beast' makes its identity crisis clear from the beginning, when it opens with villagers singing about their French lives in British accents. Later in the scene, Gaston, a native Frenchman claims in English to not understand what "je ne sais quoi" means in a poorly thought out comic bit. This dissonance in character identity from the opening then becomes a pervasive theme throughout the movie. The nominally French setting is constantly undermined by the filmmakers' Anglophilia, a microcosm of 'Beauty & The Beast's' greater identity crisis.
In the second act, after Lumiere brags about fine French dining, he immediately breaks into grand finale explicitly alluding to British India (apparently aesthetically similar French held North Africa was never considered by the filmmakers). Belle and the Beast supposedly fall in love whilst admiring the French countryside.... to the sonnets of British icon William Shakespeare. And of course, Belle teleports to her beloved birthtown of Paris--right after she goes on about her favorite play, Romeo & Juliet.
Even ignoring the lead actors' British accents, any immersion created is constantly broken by the inappropriate callbacks to British culture in what is supposed to be a rustic French setting. At some point, the producers should have just cut the BS and set the film in England. The laziness of the setting's execution, as well as the lack of research that led to it, is part of a larger issue. No element of this film feels authentic or that anyone put the time into making sure it was right.
'Beauty & The Beast' is nominally set in France, yet is unabashedly English. Belle and the Beast's relationship is supposed to be front and center, but Emma Watson's rigid performance, the Beast's poor CGI, and an emphasis on plot development over character development leaves them as nothing more than a hollow sideshow. And for a movie whose core message is to not judge by appearance, there is a weird emphasis on gaudy visuals that choke out the original's subtle emotion.
In the end, 'Beauty & The Beast' live-action edition's inability to stay true to the original's identity makes for a boring, rudderless movie with no message. It is not offensively bad, but surely not worth spending two hours on either.