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REVIEW: "Beauty and the Beast"

Genre: Drama, Musical, Fantasy, Romance
Directed By: Bill Condon
Written By: Evan Spiliotopoulos, Stephen Chbosky
Starring: Emma Watson, Dan Stevens, Luke Evans, Kevin Kline, Josh Gad, Ewan McGregor, Ian McKellen, Emma Thompson, Stanley Tucci, Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Audra McDonald
In Theaters: Mar 17, 2017  Wide
Runtime: 129 minutes
Studio: Walt Disney Pictures
Adaptating one of the Walt Disney Pictures' animated classics to a live-action film is always a challenge, for sure, but 1991's Best Picture nominee Beauty and the Beasts is a timeless film and the simple idea of "touching" it is just generates "stress"... So, what to expect when one of the Twilight Saga franchise directors takes on this project? Well, you can always pray hoping it to be more like Dreamgirls than Twilight movies! 
But, truth be said, Beauty and the Beast honours its source material quite well! 
In fact, Beauty and the Beast could be a dark tale of love, but Condon manages to turn it into a true musical and that's why it worked so well: 1991's Beauty and the Beast was a musical "Disney princess" movie and the 2017's live-action version works so nice because it uses the very same music and some iconic songs that made the original such a "magic" piece of cinema. Production design work is simply beautiful and the same can be said about the costume design - both contributing for the (re)creation of a magnetic fantasy world. 
The ensemble cast feature some of the best individual works from some of its actors: Josh Gad is scene-stealing, Luke Evans turns Gaston into an even more memorable alpha-male cartoon but somehow he manages to be successful and memorable in the part, while Dan Stevens (who showed great promise in 2014's The Guest and in Downtown Abbey TV series) does a nice job by taking the tricky part of The Beast. Emma Watson proves to be one of the most charismatic young actresses working today and not only she's a beauty, but she's a quite decent singer (she's no Paige O'Hara, let's be honest), being able to be more than just a actress who fits the part of Belle - in fact, by playing an engaging feminist heroine, Watson promises us she doesn't need Harry Potter in order to become a major star in the cinematic industry. 
So, in spite of not being effective to add anything new to the source material (if you exclude the beautiful new ballad "Evermore"), this live-action take on such a beloved tale is more of a Beauty than a Beast for sure. It adds nothing and you can call this an "unnecessary" retelling or an easy "money-making strategy" from Walt Disney studios, but it shows a clear effort to honour the original and to remind us of the "inner beauty thing" (and it stills a better option at the theaters than what we can consider "cinematic trash").

RATING: 3.5 / 5
Academy Award playing categories:
  • Best Production Design
  • Best Costume Design
  • Best Original Song ("Evermore")
  • Best Visual Effects

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