Beauty and the Beast (2017) Review

A retelling of the classic Disney animated film of the story of a Prince who is cursed to be a Beast until he can love someone.

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I am sure you had no idea that this film was even going to be released, I mean it hadn’t been on every film for the past year as a trailer. On TV constantly and then more overkill with posters and everything, ok sorry for starting off with a slight rant but I do think it was just crazy with how much publicity it was given considering Beauty and the Beast is a lot of people’s favourite Disney film. It was always going to be incredible at the box office and that has been proven in the first few days since its release.

Anyway moving onto the film, I have been very hesitant in going to see it. I mean I really do love the original film, it’s still one of my favourites. The songs just work amazingly well in it and it has the Disney magic and charm. That is where I think this live action version falls down, it doesn’t have the full magic that it should have. I thought it would be much better in terms of what you can then do with the musical numbers. I actually think it would have been better to have even more original and new songs. My favourite song and moment certainly had to be when the Beast gets his moment and a rather powerful song, it really was easily the part I liked the best, a very musical theatre feel to that one.

I think the toughest part to create the magic with had to be the servants as the furniture as that was a tricky part to really nail. At times it worked very well, but then it just lacked something. Which I know does not really explain it very well but I am struggling to figure out just what it was missing.

I was dubious about Emma Watson taking on the role of Belle but will admit that I was pleasantly surprised. Her singing voice is not very strong but it certainly worked very well for the songs she had to perform. They did have some incredible actors in the cast and that is certainly showing the power of this type of film now, even if we don’t get to see them for a long period of time at all.

I guess with the live action factor it really does make you think about a girl actually falling in love with a beast. Surely there is something wrong with that? But I guess that is totally another issue. I am trying to decide whether I actually liked it on the whole or not, I think parts of it were decent enough but it just did not capture as much magic as the animated film managed which was such a shame really.

Along with the Beast’s solo moment with the song “Evermore”, I did like what they did with “Gaston” even though “Be Our Guest” will leave you very disappointed. I am therefore very interested to now see what everyone thinks about the film. Remember though I do love the animated version, maybe that impacts how you view this one?