Tale as old as 2017

Rating: 10/10 (20 March 2017)

This tale as old as time was greatly remade with a few nice touches:
1)Gaston is really vile in this.
2)Beast and Belle's backstory are revealed.
3)LeFou is redeemed.
4)Extended look at the witch(Agatha/The Enchantress)
5)The backstory of the staff and their guilt.
I found the characters to be well represented and some of their roles were extended in a natural yet satisfactory way:
1)Belle:Emma Watson gets to expand her original story to a point where we now know why she ended up in a small,provincial town full of simple people.She is raised to be powerful and independent.After the dance scene with her prince all I could see was Belle and not Emma.Her song,Belle was well timed,sang and arranged making everyone participate and it put in perspective everyone's take on her.She became an inventor now and is attracted to create,given her parents were both artists.Also she made reading more than a hobby,for her it was an escapism,and it felt natural seeing her at the dinner table with a book.She even wants to educate the other girls,to make them grow up into respectable members of the society.
2)The Beast/Prince Adam:Dan Stevens was perfect.He embodied the cruel aspect of his character well and still was able to portray his humanity better than the original could,his eyes were magic and shown dependence,uncertainty,sadness.His character was a sweet boy who lost his mother and was shaped into a luxurious,superficial,extravagant and material man,by his dear father.He finds in Belle an equal and is shown to be more mannered than his animated representation,also more intellectual given the fact he is transformed at a latter age.He is cured in the end and becomes the man Belle helped to shape:a loving,caring and sure man.His original song "Evermore" was my favorite,the lyrics are deep and really offer a journey in depth into his mind and soul and the way it was done in the movie went even further to represent his love and loss of Belle.
3)Gaston:Luke Evans landed the role magically and helped the viewers to go behind the looks and see a truly vile,malevolent character,who all his life was after the big prize,Belle and Beast's head.He abandons all and uses manipulation on his fellow citizens to make Maurice seem mad and uses his cruelty to leave the poor man bound to a try for the wolves.He even abandons his best friend and confidant to take what he thought was rightfully his.His song is a jolly combination of humor and dance.And his lead in "Kill the Beast" shows his thirst for blood and war also his madness.
4)LeFou:Josh Gad finally gave the character a redemption,turning him into a more lovable self after he was blinded for years by the admiration for his friend,who turned out to be unworthy of him.
5)Maurice:Kevin Kline is tasked to portray a guardian and an intelligent man who lost so much:a home,the woman he loved and is tasked to raise his daughter.He grooms her with all the aspects he loved at her mother,mostly intelligence,taste and over time becomes overly protective. What I particularly liked about him was his lucidity,he wasn't that mad inventor who should end up behind bars because he put people in danger with his constructs.He faces many trials,some new ones being left to be eaten by wolves and sent to an asylum.
6)The staff:All seem on point,but for me the best was Ewan(Lumiere).He seemed more stylish than his animated counterpart.We learn now why in the end the staff accepts their fate,a good explanation which adds to the depth of the characters.
7)Agatha/The Enchantress:She has the role to teach everyone a valuable lesson of how deceiving can one appearance be.She also leaves the magic book which helps expand Belle's story.She lives in the same town as Belle,among common people.She aids Maurice and heals him,proving she has love for the people who are worth her time and is back at the end to lift the spell and make everyone remember the kingdom they once loved.This new addition to the curse offered a good explanation and tied some loose ends,also that everything is rejuvenated with the once cursed rose,strengthening the motif of the royal flower.
They way the used the special effects made me wake up in a real fairy tail,where everything came to life as things progressed.The actual death of the beast and the curse being fulfilled even for a time added tragedy to what it seem a remediable dilemma at times.
The songs were redone to the letter and the new ones are a fine addition to already a classic ensemble.My favorite as I earlier mentioned is Evermore because I can identify with the song very well. Celine Dion is back and her new song "How does a moment last forever" offers us a great lesson about love,life and is sang in her distinct,mild voice,with her specific intonation which adds to the melancholy and the message of it."Be our Guest" was better done here,on a smaller scale but very melodic,spectacular and charmingly presented(The French way)."Beauty and the Beast" touched me,but I still prefer the original version,Angela is the mistress of the song.
I loved this movie and I feel we should all enjoy it and learn something from it while we travel trough this classic french fairy tail.