BEAUTY AND THE BEAST
A faded rose
released OUT NOW! 2017 | PG | Blu-ray 3d/Blu-ray/dVd/ download Director Bill Condon Cast emma Watson, luke evans, dan stevens, Gugu Mbatha-raw
Come to Disney’s live-action remake for the visuals and you’ll have hearts in your eyes. With its birthday cake of an enchanted castle, postcard-perfect French countryside and sugared roses, you’ll be licking the screen.
But that’s where a lot of the charm ends. Instead of going bold with the source material, director Bill Condon has crafted a note-for-note remake of Disney’s 1991 animated classic that tries to be genuinely earnest but is little more than pretty pantomime. Stripping away the fairytale’s intensity for a breezier confection, it has none of the dreaminess or sexuality that punctuate prior versions of the story.
Its artifice extends to the performances. Emma Watson is as sweet and as synthetic as a doll; Luke Evans retains the campy ridiculousness but none of Gaston’s violence; and Dan Stevens is ineffectual as a hulking monster (he’s actually kinda cute).
The writers have tried their best to modernise the story: Belle is a budding inventor now, and teaches village girls how to read. This is commendable. But the film misses a crucial point: that young women deserve stories where romance isn’t required to achieve a happy ending, and heroines who aren’t more beautiful than they are.
Extras On Blu-ray, the highlight is footage from the elaborate table read (13 minutes), complete with singing and dancing. Eight deleted scenes include the revelation that the Beast has a sentient toilet (played by Stephen Merchant)! Ew. There’s also an alternate version of “Days In The Sun”, sung by the Beast’s mother. Plus: a Making Of (27 minutes); short pieces on the women who worked on the film (five minutes) and four musical numbers (13 minutes); a music video, with Making Of; Celine Dion interview; singalong songs. The DVD has nothing!
Because Luke Evans’s unusually long canines were thought distracting, he had to wear fake teeth during filming.