I’m hoping they fix Belle’s character. She was an insufferable snot in the animated version.
Look at the opening number: people are saying she’s a little weird, (“Look there she goes, that girl who’s strange, but special”). They don’t “get” her, but they like her and are kind to her. They’re giving her books, compliments, saying hello and so on. Meanwhile she’s got this obnoxious song about how the town is “provincial” (in the bourgeois sense), that the people are the lumpen proletariat and so on. She gripes about the baker making the “same ol’” bread she eats. Really, when it comes to basic food staples, surprises are not a good thing.
I totally disagree. Young man/woman wanting to get away from the small town they grew up in is not just a standard trope, it’s actually a very common feeling. Belle doesn’t want to leave because she looks down at the townspeople, and she vertainly doesn’t treat them badly. She is just a romantic small town girl with a large imagination and a desire for adventure. As the song says, this is a story as old as time.
Was I the only one at the end thinking “Gee, it be a shame if the Prince dies in a carriage accident immediately after Belle gives birth to their child”?
I disagree. The third-ish sentence out of her mouth is “Little town/Full of little people”. She can’t stand the people. And that’s where she varies from the standard trope: the local wants to leave the small town for the big city is fine. And if the locals are abusive, it’s fine to talk about how they suck. But if the locals are nice (and they are), it’s tacky to look down and sneer at them.
Saw it with my two (now adult) daughters, husband and son-in-law. It was overly long (I’d have kept only one of the new songs), but overall nostalgic and fun.
Sadly, it’s another Disney story where a normal girl gets the prince. You know, not every worthy man is royalty.
Gaston was a hoot.
I thought Lefou was played by Jack Black. :smack:
I barely recognized Matthew Crawley. And I find it funny that Stevens’ left Downton Abbey in part because he didn’t want to be typecast as the hunk of the week.
And I’d have much rather seen Belle do something more to assist the Beast than simply falling on his dying body. I didn’t expect Matrix moves, but for all her “modern” traits, she could have done more than just stand there. And I hated that it was her father who picked the lock of the paddy wagon.
I expected the Enchantress to be her late mother. Still not sure what that was all about.
Emma Thompson must have padded her wardrobe quite a bit. I recognized her speaking voice, but I doubt it was her singing.
The wolves were well done. And Phillipe did an outstanding job of slipping on the ice.
I saw it tonight with my wife. It was her idea (naturally) and I had never seen the full cartoon version although I’d seen enough bits and pieces to know the broad strokes of the story going in.
Eh, I liked it. I probably won’t ever pause my channel surfing to say “Oh, shit, B&tB is on, stop” but I half expected to spend two hours not believing I had to sit through this shit but was instead fairly entertained. I thought some of the stuff people were ranting about was overblown: LeFou’s homosexuality and Watson/Belle’s “independence” were there but hardly in your face or a focus of the story. It felt kind of silly that Belle & the Beast would strike up a friendship/romance within 48 hours but, eh, fairy tale whatever.
I thought Belle seemed kind enough to her friends in the town, the baker and the librarian guy, but just wanted to get away. Others certainly were nasty to her and those who regarded her fondly would probably agree that her talents were wasted there.
I spent too long pondering the governing implications of the story – wouldn’t the townspeople notice that no one was collecting taxes any longer? Or what of whichever governmental power stepped into the vacuum and has been paying the soldiers and repairing the roads for the last umpteen years? All of a sudden there’s a prince back in charge and governing over the region. Ah, ok, fairy tale
You should read Liz Braswell’s As Old As Time, then. It’s part of her Twisted Tales series, which are alt-universe, what-if takes on Disney movies. They add new dimensions to familiar characters, and cause us to look at others in a different light. For example, in A Whole New World (her Aladdin one), they bring up the point that the lovable, roly-poly comic-relief Sultan we liked in the movie couldn’t have been THAT great a ruler if all he did was play with his toy collection and fret over his daughter’s marriage while there was such abject poverty in his city… But unlike some other YA reimaginings, these retellings don’t DROWN in darkness.
I think the Enchantress was simply disguising herself as a well-known figure in town–she was a beggar in town as well, wasn’t she? I think she may have been the one Gaston pointed out to Belle when he warned her what happened to spinsters when their fathers were no longer around.
Anyway…I think this is my favorite (so far) of the live-action reimaginings. I liked the embellishments and additions, the fleshing-out of certain characters. I liked the new songs and the arrangements of the old ones. (I was a little disappointed that the Broadway show’s songs weren’t included…but listen closely to the scene where Belle is shown to her room and you’ll hear “Home” as underscoring. And I LOVED “Evermore.”) I liked the fact that the spell erased the memories of the townspeople…answering a long-held question, “what was this guy the Prince OF, if no one ever even wondered where their ruler had gotten to?” And the reunions at the end (“Henry”? Always figured Cogsworth for an “Edward” or “Edmund”). Above all, I loved the visuals.
Now, my hope for the new version of Aladdin is that, instead of just making a straight-up retelling of the animated movie…they adapt the Broadway musical instead. In the stage version, they reinstate characters (Aladdin’s three roguish buddies, for example) and songs that were originally planned for the movie, but cut. (And Iago in this version is human. I guess they didn’t want to overdo the puppetry and such for fear of being too much of a Lion King clone.) The writers of the original movie said that at first they’d hoped to give it a classic-MGM-musical vibe. If the new version did this, it would be more unique, have its own style, and avoid the criticism that’s been leveled at this…that it’s a little too close to the original.
I saw it yesterday with friends. Well, it’s not a shot-for-shot remake, although there certainly are some shots that came straight out of the cartoon version. The old songs were all done pretty much the same, but when I compare them I still think that the original toon versions of these scenes were better. Belle’s dresses were the same.
It’s the differences and additions I made note of.
I liked that they added the element of the stolen rose from the original fairy tale, which was not in the cartoon.
I liked that, after the wolf attack, there’s a scene in the Beast’s bedroom that shows that the servants have explained to Belle that, yes, they used to be human beings and they’re all under a curse, and that they’ll lose even the little life they still have very soon once that rose in the glass case drops its last petal. Belle says she wants to help, but they don’t tell her what she’s expected to do to break the curse for them. Maybe they’re not allowed to under the terms of the curse, or maybe they’re afraid that she’ll look at that big, furry, sleeping creature and say “You’ve got to be kidding!”
I was interested when the villagers were storming the castle–which can’t be more than a couple of miles away–and they began to remember it. Mr. Potts came as a surprise. Mrs. Potts’ private chat with LeFou in the midst of the battle was amusing (“You’re too good for him, dear.”)
Some of the friends I went to the movie with, who hadn’t seen the original version or hadn’t seen it in a long time, enjoyed it more than those of us who knew the songs by heart.
After the movie, my friends and I discussed whether this happened before or after the Revolution and Reign of Terror–and if the curse actually saved the prince in his forgotten castle from going to the guillotine. We noted that Gaston had fought in some non-specified war.
“Oh, hey, you have to legitimately fall in love with that monster and everything we do will be pushing you along to that end because we’re desperate for you to save our lives and not damn us to watching our few hours of humanity slip away before turning into household objects. No pressure, though.”
Although, now that I think about it, the curse was just that someone had to love him, not that they had to be in love with him. Belle could have just deeply appreciated his companionship and all that loved him in a brotherly sort of way without wanting to have his fur-babies. I mean the thrust of the curse was mainly that no one could find goodness in his heart not that no one could find him sexy.
My wife and I saw it with my grown daughter (who we took to the original version when she was 5), along with her 6-year old daughter.
Some additional viewpoints:
Although Emma Watson certainly is nice looking, I wouldn’t classify her as “beautiful”. My daughter said she’s supposed to be beautiful on the inside, but she’s not a glamorous beauty. There are several close-ups of her face that I found annoying, almost as if her contract had the amount of face-time specified. Those scenes seem like they would play better on a television screen.
There is one scene where she goes to the hill outside of the village, and I was expecting the same kind of magic that Julie Andrews showed in The Sound of Music, but the scene felt flat. It looked like she was told where to stand, she got to her mark, and either didn’t know what to do or the director didn’t know what to do.
And I still liked her in the part. I thought the movie was quite magical and very beautiful. Gaston and the Beast were well played, but I was sorry to see the Beast transform into a generic handsome prince.
I haven’t seen the movie, but just based on the trailers I thought basically the same thing. In the animated version then Belle isn’t supposed to be particularly glamorous, but she is supposed to be such a great natural beauty that Gaston is determined to marry her even though they have nothing in common, she dislikes him, and he could have his pick of other local women.
It makes me feel like a jerk thinking that an actress who is quite attractive – I actually thought Emma Watson was a little too pretty for the role of Hermione – isn’t beautiful enough to be Belle, but she doesn’t seem like the type who’d catch the eye of a man like Gaston. But perhaps the live-action movie plays up the “he wants what he can’t have” angle?
I can’t compare to the animated version but the live action makes clear that part of Belle’s allure is that she is a challenge versus the other, more “glamorous”*, single women in town who throw themselves at him.
TOWNSWOMEN
“Now it’s no wonder that her name means “Beauty”
Her looks have got no parallel”
GASTON
She’s the one - the lucky girl I’m going to marry.
LEFOU
But she’s -
GASTON
The most beautiful girl in town.
(SNIP)
GASTON
Right from the moment when I met her, saw her
I said she’s gorgeous and I fell
Here in town there’s only she
Who is beautiful as me
So I’m making plans to woo and marry Belle"
So, yeah, Watson doesn’t quite fit the bill, but I guess “Beauty & the Beast” has more of a ring to it than “Smart, Charming and Relatively Attractive & the Beast.”
