A Total Disn-aster

Rating: 2/10 (12 October 2017)

Beauty and the Beast (2017) was a Disn-aster (Disney disaster). This live action remake of Beauty and The Beast (1991) felt nothing short of a Japanese live-action anime remake. The plot is pretty similar to the original, loosely based on the novel written by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont (1756). Similar to the 1991 animated story, Belle and her father move to a town where they are considered outcasts by the locals. Belle's father heads out to an event, gets redirected to the Beast's lair and becomes his prisoner. Belle rescues her father by taking his place and for the next two hours we witness Stockholm syndrome. This film left me and many others Disneypointed (disappointed in Disney). This film made me think about how not to rush a story through production and consider the additional steps needed to insure a film could be pulled off well. There was in fact a team of screenwriters for this movie: Stephen Chbosky and Evan Spiliutopoulos. I feel that there strengths were that they made a film that got financed. I feel that there weaknesses were that there was not enough strength in the film to make it good enough to stand on its own. The script relied heavily on the fact that the audience saw the 1991 animated version and understood that this was just a re-telling of that story. The director was Bill Condon who previously directed the Twilight: Breaking Dawn film. His strengths in this film were that he could blend the visual effects with the real life film quite well. There was enough space in each composition to make room for the CGI components and nothing really felt visually contrived. His weakness was made apparent in casting and editing. Half of the cast was trained to "sing" with no real talent and made up for in post via auto- tune, or just left in the movie (Gaston went flat when he rallied the villagers. It was hard to miss). The film was edited by Virginia Katz, who had previously worked with Condon in Twilight: Breaking Dawn and in other previous films. The editing that seemed to work well was the composition of shots in the "Be Our Guest" scene. There was a lot of seamless movement in that scene and it was really quite impressive. The cinematographer for this movie was Tobias A. Shliessler, who worked with Condon previously on Dream Girls. To me the lighting on this film felt odd and misplaced at times, which made the castle feel like a fake set. I personally wish there was more contrast over the scenes like there was in the animated film. Overall, there is a lot that I would have done differently. I wouldn't have rushed production. As a director I would have utilized more close-ups and would have hung on the shots that mattered. I would have maybe written a little more in character back stories, without completely changing the characters. As a musically based piece, I would have cast actors who could sing and maybe carried similar mannerisms to the animated characters. I would have also cast actors who looked more like those characters and kept them true to their characters. I probably also would have played up the original film score to serve the film. This really had potential to be a better movie than it was and I am personally disappointed with the half- hearted effort put forth by one of the largest studios in the world.