'Beauty and the Beast': Not cute. Weird. Really weird.
Complaining that clocks can't talk would be an obnoxious, inexcusable refusal to suspend disbelief and enjoy fantasy. But endorsing Disney’s 1991 version of "Beauty and the Beast" requires conscious acceptance of the following:
The prince must find love by 21 and the curse has been in place 10 years, which means he wasn’t even 11 when it was cast. It’s very odd to counteract a child’s superficial attitude by transforming him into an animal and forcing him into a relationship. It’s like an inverse “The Lobster.”
Teaching someone about inner beauty by requiring him to find someone else who cares about inner beauty, then rewarding the achievement by making him attractive again too. Or that making love mandatory doesn't create doubt about a relationship that emerges from that pressure. It's like a witness who cut a deal.
By suggesting that “tale as old as time” refers not to a love story but to the pairing of beauty and beast, the message is of a woman domesticating a man, which is also troubling because Belle’s dreams of having “more than this provincial life” are so vague. All she does is read, the primary characteristic that makes others see her as a "puzzle." She does not have a job or career goals.
They “fall in love” because he’s nice for like two seconds, and there’s no practical consideration that he’s, you know, a giant animal. Unless you count the lyric "Finding you can change, learning you were wrong," although Belle wasn't wrong and doesn't change other than accepting that an angry talking buffalo who kidnaps her can be gentle too. The reality show "Beauty and the Geek" was smarter than this, sheesh, Best Picture nominee.
There is a child teacup younger than the length of the curse, which means someone slept with Mrs. Potts. Who. How. And several other issues of biology.
Clearly, this would work better if he was a human who was ugly on the inside and outside, and/or was tasked with learning to see the inner beauty of someone not initially seen as outwardly beautiful. “Shallow Hal” is far more crass but no more problematic. But, alas, Disney’s back to tell this French fairy tale through live action because clearly converting self-operating brooms into CGI in "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" was such a knockout.
For what it's worth, a few things have changed: Now the setting is identified as “the hidden heart of France” rather than “a faraway land," which suggested Europeans weren’t meant to see this. (Though this is still a France before anyone spoke the language and no one other than talking candles had a French accent.) And there is a (very unconvincing) explanation of why the staff, converted into a teapot (Emma Thompson), wardrobe (Audra McDonald) and so forth, still helps out around the house in cutesy fashion, though not why the Beast doesn’t share their guilt or an acknowledgement of their self-interest in wanting anyone to break the curse, regardless of compatibility. That they acknowledge the situation to Belle seems like cheating.
Mostly, this overlong “Beauty and the Beast,” directed by Bill Condon (“Dreamgirls,” the last two “Twilight” movies) and written by Stephen Chbosky (“The Perks of Being a Wallflower”) and a guy who’s mostly worked on straight-to-video Disney sequels like “Pooh’s Heffalump Halloween Movie,” loses its previous charms without gaining new ones. The “Be Our Guest” scene, dizzying and delightful in the animated version, is now anything but, and not just because the vocal skills of Ewan McGregor are such a massive step down from Jerry Orbach as Lumiere, who now looks creepy. The sequence is so bizarre that Emma Watson, initially charming but then lost as Belle -- who is regarded as the loveliest woman in town and whose name means beauty; say again how this suggests appearance doesn't matter? -- can't figure out how to react. She should look stunned and kind of freaked out. Instead she just exhibits blank, faux-happiness.
Oh, before I forget: The perfect casting from a visual standpoint would have been "Me and Earl and the Dying Girl" co-star Katherine Hughes, who looks just like Belle. Right?
OK, back to it: It should have been Chris Evans, not Luke Evans, as aggressive and stupid Gaston, who is neither taller nor burlier than Belle's father, Maurice (Kevin Kline), and thus doesn't earn his song about how big and great he is. As for Maurice, he's now less wacky and not even an inventor (that was more of a late-‘80s/early-'90s onscreen dad thing), so the townspeople's dismissal of anything he says seems more arbitrary. Though one of the film's few sweet moments comes during his introduction, singing to himself about love making a moment last forever. It's nice.
As is a brief flicker between Belle and the Beast (Dan Stevens of "Legion" and "The Guest") when they almost establish a connection as two loners. Yet it still feels too minor, too forced. The movie also can't decide how much Belle worries about her dad or find a way to handle the material -- the way she refers to her affections as "a bit alarming" feels like the understatement of the decade. Hitting her with a big snowball in an animated movie can be playful. In live-action, it looks like it would leave a bruise and require a major apology. But Condon skips right past that because there’s more opulent, fake-looking scenery to showcase.
Besides, the Beast's character never makes any emotional sense. He was a total jackass who's become short-tempered and scary in his animal form but has put no effort into breaking the curse for his sake or that of the staff (who isn't mad), and can reverse his attitude on a dime? It turns the Beast into a Snickers commercial, just a good guy in a bad mood.
It's low praise to say "Beauty and the Beast" isn't as horrendous as the “Cinderella” remake or unintentionally funny like "Beastly," a terrible movie about a similar concept that I'd be more inclined to watch again than this unnecessary remake. But it's still just a princess fantasy disguised as empowerment, revealing only that someone who likes books may feel OK about someone who has books, can defend her from wolves and isn't a total jerk. It’s not a feminist story.
As for the much-discussed, "first openly gay Disney character," Gaston's sidekick LeFou, well, Josh Gad remains one of the world’s least subtle, most excruciating actors. His interpretation is to make LeFou a more flamboyant Smithers, without any idea how to create truth or land a joke.
The only idea that registered anew is, as Gaston goes about his same, transparently unpleasant agenda, the danger of a foolish group of people blindly following a large, egotistical idiot without a clue or interest in knowing how to talk to women or exist in society.
D+
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