BEAUTY AND THE BEAST
PG, 125 minutes. Niantic, Mystic Luxury Cinemas, Waterford, Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. The chaotic, pushy remake of Disney’s 1991 screen musical “Beauty and the Beast” stresses the challenges of adapting a success in one form (animation) for another (live-action). We’re in for a long line of Disney remakes in the coming years: Everything from “Dumbo” to “Aladdin” is headed for a wallet near you, banking on nostalgia and brand recognition. The financial wallop of the recent, pretty good live-action “Jungle Book” redo, and the live-action “Cinderella” before that, set a high bar of corporate expectation. “Beauty and the Beast” will no doubt please the stockholders. It’s just not a very good movie, is all. Why? The high points of director Bill Condon’s resume suggest he was the right person for this big-budget remake. The maker of “Gods and Monsters” and “Kinsey” possesses a basic understanding of the musical genre’s building blocks, given his success with “Dreamgirls.” And since he made one of the “Twilight” movies, “Breaking Dawn: Part I” (which he himself called “a disaster”), Condon is certainly familiar with the live-action/digital effects mashup currently overwhelming contemporary screen fantasies of all kinds. The new movie is more of a grating disappointment, despite its best supporting turns, human and animatronic. Condon races through the story beats at an unvarying pace, usually with his camera too close to the performers while the digital effects overwhelm the screen. Emma Watson makes for a genial, bland-ish Belle, the freakish outsider in her provincial French village because of her interest in books and her indifference to the local hunky baritone, Gaston (Luke Evans). Underneath the digital fur and digital roars, Dan Stevens as the Beast, the transformed prince working on a rose-petaled deadline to become human again, locates some moments of pathos that stick. The problems here, I think, are weirdly simple. The movie takes our knowledge and our interest in the material for granted. It zips from one number to another, throwing a ton of frenetically edited eye candy at the screen, charmlessly. — Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune
THE BELKO EXPERIMENT
H1/2 R, 88 minutes. Through today only at Lisbon. A pull quote on a poster announces that “The Belko Experiment” is “‘Office Space’ meets ‘Battle Royale.’” That’s not praise so much as a declaration of fact. Since the 2000 Japanese film about teens forced to kill each other in a government-sanctioned murder game, there have been many a riff on that cult classic. It’s a story format with which we’ve become familiar: Unwitting civilians are placed in a controlled environment where they are compelled by a Big Brother type to kill each other or be killed themselves. The variable is always the why. In “The Belko Experiment,” the why turns out to be social science, much like the 1961 Milgram experiment on obedience to authority figures, which explored individual willingness to go against personal moral conscience in obeying commands. “The Belko Experiment,” written by James Gunn, is an extreme, gory and extremely violent take on research of that kind. — Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service
CHIPS
1/2 R, 100 minutes. Waterford, Westbrook, Lisbon. The randy action-comedy “CHIPS” is pitched right to that 18-24 demographic, but that audience is probably wondering what this whole California Highway Patrol movie is about. Two words, teens: Erik Estrada. He was the ultimate late ‘70s small-screen sex symbol and people were really into his hair — at least according to what we’ve been able to glean from the “CHiPS” detritus that always seems to be in the pop cultural ether. Who knew that a TV dramedy about a pair of cool motorcycle riding cops and their antics in the SoCal sunshine would have such staying power? The series, which went off the air 34 years ago, has been reconfigured by writer/director/ star Dax Shepard for the big screen. He delivers a film that simmers with a
rambunctious and insouciant energy, one that’ll have your chuckling in spite of yourself. Shepard plays Jon Baker, a loosey goosey former X-Games motocross athlete who has joined the CHP in a last ditch attempt to win back the heart of his wife, Karen (Kristen Bell). Studded with scars from his physical and emotional injuries, he gobbles pain pills, and rainy weather essentially paralyzes him. He speaks in therapy language and is more emotionally intelligent than any other kind of smart. If anything, Shepard gives his character too many issues, and they pay off in punchlines rather than story moments, which are mostly unnecessary. Though Jon may be riddled with quirks, the swaggering, uber-macho Ponch (Michael Pena) draws our focus. This might be a buddy comedy, but Pena is the clear star of the show. Finally, someone gives the always excellent perennial supporting actor the spotlight (and of course he has to share it). His Ponch is a maverick undercover FBI agent with two fatal flaws: He’s a sex addict, and he keeps shooting his partner (Adam Brody). The jokes are dirty and wildly inappropriate, but are thoughtfully played. Pena’s star turn and Shepard’s easy-breezy weirdo comic touch make the light comedy worth a watch. — Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service
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