Beauty and the Beast (2017)
Just went to see Disney's latest "Beauty and the Beast", which was recommended by everyone from the conductor at our last orchestra rehearsal to the greengrocer), and was very disappointed :-(
Most of the film ranged from mediocre to downright annoying -- I don't know how I would have reacted if I hadn't been mentally comparing it to the animated version, which charmed me so much that I remember buying my mother a ticket to make sure she went to see it, but in comparison with that version I felt it came off very badly. The opening scene wasn't too bad as a fleshed-out live-action version of something that was heavily stylised in the first place, but as soon as we got to "Bonjour!" my heart sank. Emma Watson looked completely out of place (apparently she refused to wear stays for her costume in order to emphasise the anachronism of her rewritten character) and the busy town scene that was so full of life in its caricatured version was neither realistic nor vigorously fake. (And let's not mention the benign black bookseller and the high proportion of other black characters magically appearing in the depths of rural France, presumably to appeal to the American market -- I boggled a bit at all the exotic princesses in the opening number, but the Prince was supposed to have been recruiting beauties from far and wide, after all. When the 'colour-blind' casting carried on throughout the entire setting, though, it started to feel more than a bit pointed -- especially as I notice we didn't get any black villains.)
Feminist Belle is... annoying. Quite a lot of things about this film were annoying, not least its habit of trying far too hard to patch perceived plot holes and deficiencies in its characters. "Tries far too hard" sums it up, really.
The one plot issue that I did feel needed addressing from the original was the idea that the Prince had to break the spell before his twenty-first birthday, which imposed an improbable timescale, since the Beast came across as much older than twenty and would have have to be ridiculously young in the first place for the curse to last for any length of time -- instead of trying to explain this one away, very wisely they silently drop the reference. And the additions I enjoyed were the added characters of the musical wardrobe and piano, plus the idea that the characters are not merely doomed to remain cursed, but will become items of furniture for real if it goes on too long. Although having a lengthy would-be weepy sequence at the end where not only does the Beast actually die -- before being resurrected by the Dea ex Machina -- but all the other characters effectively perish, as well, was a typical case of over-egging the pudding, which this film does all too often.
Another example was the attempt to root Belle's literary tastes back into learned admirability by having her earnestly quote Shakespeare throughout the film rather than, say, sighing over the escapism of "Cinderella". I remember that sequence at the end of "Bonjour!", where she runs out onto the streaming grass of the hill-top and sings of her longing for "the great wide somewhere" away from the cheerful, well-meaning domestic preoccupations of her neighbours, as the 'lift-off' moment of the animated version; it spoke to everything that I was and everything I hoped for. Here -- not at all aided by the obvious fake 'reality' of the flowers and scenery -- the presentation of it felt thoroughly manipulative; that was the moment at which it first began to dawn on me that I might actually come to dislike this version :-(
And I don't think it's all down to an intervening twenty-five years of unhappiness (and total failure to reach any great wide somewheres, or indeed to get anywhere at all). This film comes across as trying to sell a message -- pump a brand -- create 'Disney princess' material (with all its post-'Frozen' overlays of girl power and empowerment) -- in a way that the original never did. It's self-conscious all the way, and it's killed the magic.
I had no particular objection to Disney's live-action remake of their "Cinderella", possibly because I barely even knew the original (I think I once saw it on black-and-white TV over Christmas -- or was that their equally forgettable 'Sleeping Beauty'? Not classic Disney either way). I saw it and quite liked it.
With this one they took on the much more risky task of remaking something that was a hit in its own right to begin with, thus giving themselves a much higher bar to pass. (There's an aphorism that it takes a bad book to make a great movie -- something similar may apply to remakes...) And the end result reminds me of fan-fiction; the constant over-the-top urge to provide explanations and enlargements for every detail of the original, often to its detriment, plus the subconscious(?) desire to steer it in the desired moral direction and prove that the Phantom really is just a poor innocent hard-done-by victim or Belle really is an empowered feisty 21st-century heroine.
Cogsworth very much gets the thin end of the stick in this version, I felt -- in the original, I remember him as a by-the-book stickler of an English butler figure, but with unsuspected moments of dignity and heroism. Here he's basically the cowardly comic relief who is always on the wrong side of every disagreement, and the whole thing ends up with yet another laugh at his expense when he is restored to the arms of his unpleasant wife.
And while most people who disliked the film seemed to mention the character of Gaston as its one saving grace, I disliked Gaston as well... and not in the enjoyable way you were meant to dislike him :-(
I found him utterly charmless; the original is handsome, conceited, talented in his own sphere, genuinely convinced that he is the best thing ever to happen to Belle and quite unable to understand why she can't see it. This version, who deliberately kicks mud over the girls who admire him and often seems to need talking down from a psychotic fit, comes across as rather less blindly self-centred and more coldly narcissistic. Gaston's song in the inn ought to be one of the comic and rousing highlights of the film; here he doesn't come across as particularly depressed or wounded in the first place (the original Gaston genuinely didn't seem to understand this unprecedented failure of his charms; this one is a sadist who actively prefers hunting down reluctant 'prey'), and the swashbuckling elements of the scene don't take off. In trying (I think) to give him more psychological depth, they've removed the casual swagger of the original and the necessary charisma that would explain why people follow and adore him; he becomes simply nasty from the start, and it doesn't help that (from my perspective) he doesn't appear particularly handsome, either.
(Although when the Beast turns back into a human and finally does his delayed face-reveal, I was amused to find my reaction to his shoulder-length fair hair to be "It's Raoul!" It really is the whole Patrick Wilson effect -- now we know where they got their ideas for the the wig and shirt :-p)
Dan Stevens as the Prince
Patrick Wilson as a long-haired movie Raoul
[Edit: an interesting article on the costume choices - Belle's costumes don't fit the live-action beauty and the beast, but they fit her brand: "Belle doesn't look like she belongs in her own story".)
This entry was originally posted at http://igenlode.dreamwidth.org/94914.html, where there are
comments.
Most of the film ranged from mediocre to downright annoying -- I don't know how I would have reacted if I hadn't been mentally comparing it to the animated version, which charmed me so much that I remember buying my mother a ticket to make sure she went to see it, but in comparison with that version I felt it came off very badly. The opening scene wasn't too bad as a fleshed-out live-action version of something that was heavily stylised in the first place, but as soon as we got to "Bonjour!" my heart sank. Emma Watson looked completely out of place (apparently she refused to wear stays for her costume in order to emphasise the anachronism of her rewritten character) and the busy town scene that was so full of life in its caricatured version was neither realistic nor vigorously fake. (And let's not mention the benign black bookseller and the high proportion of other black characters magically appearing in the depths of rural France, presumably to appeal to the American market -- I boggled a bit at all the exotic princesses in the opening number, but the Prince was supposed to have been recruiting beauties from far and wide, after all. When the 'colour-blind' casting carried on throughout the entire setting, though, it started to feel more than a bit pointed -- especially as I notice we didn't get any black villains.)
Feminist Belle is... annoying. Quite a lot of things about this film were annoying, not least its habit of trying far too hard to patch perceived plot holes and deficiencies in its characters. "Tries far too hard" sums it up, really.
The one plot issue that I did feel needed addressing from the original was the idea that the Prince had to break the spell before his twenty-first birthday, which imposed an improbable timescale, since the Beast came across as much older than twenty and would have have to be ridiculously young in the first place for the curse to last for any length of time -- instead of trying to explain this one away, very wisely they silently drop the reference. And the additions I enjoyed were the added characters of the musical wardrobe and piano, plus the idea that the characters are not merely doomed to remain cursed, but will become items of furniture for real if it goes on too long. Although having a lengthy would-be weepy sequence at the end where not only does the Beast actually die -- before being resurrected by the Dea ex Machina -- but all the other characters effectively perish, as well, was a typical case of over-egging the pudding, which this film does all too often.
Another example was the attempt to root Belle's literary tastes back into learned admirability by having her earnestly quote Shakespeare throughout the film rather than, say, sighing over the escapism of "Cinderella". I remember that sequence at the end of "Bonjour!", where she runs out onto the streaming grass of the hill-top and sings of her longing for "the great wide somewhere" away from the cheerful, well-meaning domestic preoccupations of her neighbours, as the 'lift-off' moment of the animated version; it spoke to everything that I was and everything I hoped for. Here -- not at all aided by the obvious fake 'reality' of the flowers and scenery -- the presentation of it felt thoroughly manipulative; that was the moment at which it first began to dawn on me that I might actually come to dislike this version :-(
And I don't think it's all down to an intervening twenty-five years of unhappiness (and total failure to reach any great wide somewheres, or indeed to get anywhere at all). This film comes across as trying to sell a message -- pump a brand -- create 'Disney princess' material (with all its post-'Frozen' overlays of girl power and empowerment) -- in a way that the original never did. It's self-conscious all the way, and it's killed the magic.
I had no particular objection to Disney's live-action remake of their "Cinderella", possibly because I barely even knew the original (I think I once saw it on black-and-white TV over Christmas -- or was that their equally forgettable 'Sleeping Beauty'? Not classic Disney either way). I saw it and quite liked it.
With this one they took on the much more risky task of remaking something that was a hit in its own right to begin with, thus giving themselves a much higher bar to pass. (There's an aphorism that it takes a bad book to make a great movie -- something similar may apply to remakes...) And the end result reminds me of fan-fiction; the constant over-the-top urge to provide explanations and enlargements for every detail of the original, often to its detriment, plus the subconscious(?) desire to steer it in the desired moral direction and prove that the Phantom really is just a poor innocent hard-done-by victim or Belle really is an empowered feisty 21st-century heroine.
Cogsworth very much gets the thin end of the stick in this version, I felt -- in the original, I remember him as a by-the-book stickler of an English butler figure, but with unsuspected moments of dignity and heroism. Here he's basically the cowardly comic relief who is always on the wrong side of every disagreement, and the whole thing ends up with yet another laugh at his expense when he is restored to the arms of his unpleasant wife.
And while most people who disliked the film seemed to mention the character of Gaston as its one saving grace, I disliked Gaston as well... and not in the enjoyable way you were meant to dislike him :-(
I found him utterly charmless; the original is handsome, conceited, talented in his own sphere, genuinely convinced that he is the best thing ever to happen to Belle and quite unable to understand why she can't see it. This version, who deliberately kicks mud over the girls who admire him and often seems to need talking down from a psychotic fit, comes across as rather less blindly self-centred and more coldly narcissistic. Gaston's song in the inn ought to be one of the comic and rousing highlights of the film; here he doesn't come across as particularly depressed or wounded in the first place (the original Gaston genuinely didn't seem to understand this unprecedented failure of his charms; this one is a sadist who actively prefers hunting down reluctant 'prey'), and the swashbuckling elements of the scene don't take off. In trying (I think) to give him more psychological depth, they've removed the casual swagger of the original and the necessary charisma that would explain why people follow and adore him; he becomes simply nasty from the start, and it doesn't help that (from my perspective) he doesn't appear particularly handsome, either.
(Although when the Beast turns back into a human and finally does his delayed face-reveal, I was amused to find my reaction to his shoulder-length fair hair to be "It's Raoul!" It really is the whole Patrick Wilson effect -- now we know where they got their ideas for the the wig and shirt :-p)
Dan Stevens as the Prince
Patrick Wilson as a long-haired movie Raoul
[Edit: an interesting article on the costume choices - Belle's costumes don't fit the live-action beauty and the beast, but they fit her brand: "Belle doesn't look like she belongs in her own story".)
This entry was originally posted at http://igenlode.dreamwidth.org/94914.html, where there are
comments.