'Beauty and the Beast': Another Pointless Remake

Rating: 6/10 (20 March 2017)

There's really one key question you have to ask yourself when remaking a classic: how are you making this different than before? how are you contributing to the mythos of this story? At best, it's unwise to create a remake without an original vision; it will surely suffer when compared to the original. Remember Gus Van Sant's misguided shot-for-shot remake of "Psycho"?
2017's "Beauty and the Beast" isn't nearly as ill-advised, but it's in the same vain. Disney has been remaking their animated classics into live action films over the past few years, primarily due to the success of 2010's "Alice in Wonderland". However, with the exception of Jon Favreau's spectacular "The Jungle Book", the whole endeavor has been grossly underwhelming. Sadly, "Beauty and the Beast" is not an exception.
That's not to say the movie is bad per se. It's well made with some incredibly talented actors in the mix (Kevin Kline, Ewan Mcgregor, Stanley Tucci, Emma Thompson, and Ian Mckellan all in supporting roles) solidly mixing drama with gentle goofiness. The animation on Beast is iffy, but in general, the computer effects are well done. The movie is overlong, but the pacing balances out this issue for the most part. Honestly, in a vacuum, this would be a very good movie.
However, this movie doesn't exist in the vacuum. The 1991 animated classic is essentially the same movie. Sure, this version includes some more backstory for the supporting cast, but it's nothing that's necessary. Some of the changes are good and some are bad. In the end, the changes are a wash to the movie's overall quality.
As for the stuff they didn't change, it's near identical to the original. It's to the point where they almost certainly just cut and pasted pages of 1991's script into this movie. As an example of the changes, there's a key point in this movie where things play out as they did in 1991, however, some details are altered such that the end product doesn't make sense.
All the classic songs make a return in decent covers by the new cast. However, they also add new songs. If you've just emerged from a cave after 30 years, there's an easy way to tell which are the classic songs and which are new: the classic songs are the good ones.
Fact is, while this is a solid movie on it's own, it's impossible to recommend when in-essence this movie already exists. If you're a huge Beauty and the Beast fan and await with bated-breath any incarnation of this story, then wait no more, you'll probably have fun with this. The rest of us should save our money and rent the 1991 movie.