I’m burning through my Disney+ subscription, and instead of this forever cursing my drafts section until I work my way through the other lower movies on this list, you’re getting this one now.
Beauty and the Beast was my favorite Disney movie as a child. Belle was smart, she read a lot, and she was a bit of an outcast, which were my only identifiers as a wee lass (other than being obnoxious and constantly having tangled hair). I’m going to bet that this movie is the reason so many girls my age went through a Paris phase in their tween years. I did take 3 years of high school French that I have almost no memory of.
The original’s animation is gorgeous, the songs by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman are iconic, and the romance between two people who learn how to trust and support each other… it’s probably the reason why I’ve stayed in terrible relationships for way too long. My father took me to see this movie in theaters when I was 6, and it is the first movie I remember crying during out of sadness. There I was while the Beast was dying trying to hide the fact tears were streaming down my face because I didn’t want my dad to see I was crying and not take me to see another movie again. When they adapted it for Broadway, I listened to that soundtrack over and over… “Home” was my favorite song, and the end still makes me cry like a 6-year-old. It’s perfect.
I had attempted to watch this remake once before. I hated it so much I started drinking, and then peaced out so hard when Lumiere started moving that I had to watch Moana to normalize myself. Visually, this movie is what happens when the Uncanny Valley turns into the fucking Grand Canyon. Little did I know that this movie gets worse… much worse… as it goes on, and that Stephen Chbosky, the author and director of The Perks of Being a Wallflower made it this way. A man who wrote one of my most beloved novels and movie adaptations helped in creating this narrative monstrosity, and that, out of all of this, was the deepest cut of all.
I’m not rehashing the plot, because I have too much to say about why this remake shouldn’t exist, and I’m going to guess you’ve either seen the movie or are familiar with this almost 300-year-old story. It took the source material and just murdered it in its attempts to update it. I’m going to start positive and work toward the biggest issue I had with it, because I’m currently writing angry and that never turns out well for me.
Things I liked:
- This may be controversial, but I did like Josh Gad’s performance as LeFou. I’m not saying what LeFou did made any sense (he suddenly was upset Gaston was making things up again?), but as an actor, Josh Gad was working with what he had, and I think he owned it.
- Chip’s introduction to Maurice – I actually paused the movie because I was laughing so hard.
- The piano playing the funeral march when it tackled LeFou.
- When Mrs. Potts said Chip smelled good when he turned back into a little boy. It was a cute little detail.
- The guillotine joke in “Be Our Guest” and the Les Miserables barricade reference.
- I actually thought Cogsworth was adorable for being a CGI nightmare. I don’t know how much of my opinion of this was influenced by the voice of Ian McKellan.
- I really liked the costumes, except for Belle’s gown, which was definitely a downgrade. Micarah articulated the issues with it perfectly.
- Celine Dion singing the credits song was a nice homage to her cover of “Beauty and the Beast”, although it sucks she’s associated with this nightmare of a remake.
Little quibbles:
- Whatever they did to Emma Watson’s voice made her sound like a robot.
- Almost all the CGI, especially the Beast, was completely unsettling. The wardrobe was the worst of it, holy shit.
- They went out of their way to explain plot holes like “Why don’t the villagers remember the castle?” or “Why is it snowing when it looks like the middle of summer in the village?” or “How did Belle get the Beast up on that horse?” when none of that really matters to the overall narrative.
- The reaction to Belle teaching a little girl how to read was unbelievably eye-roll inducing. Lindsay Ellis’ video on this is so fucking good, watch it now – You don’t have to read the rest of my ramblings if you do. #beastforshe
- Ariana Grande slurring her way through “Beauty and the Beast”.
- It was nice to see Maurice updated from a manic inventor to a level-headed, sweet, competent, reserved man who treats his daughter like an equal. Clock-maker Maurice that actually takes care of Belle reads better to me, and I like how they had him wander into the garden to get a rose for her – it’s a nice callback to the original story. The problem with doing this, however, is it negates the “crazy old Maurice” narrative that plays heavily into why the villagers don’t believe his tale of the Beast in the first place. If Kevin Kline, a put-together man (up until this point), wandered into the tavern looking disheveled and conveying a story about his daughter being kidnapped, I’d be like, “Shit, Maurice, what did you see?!”. But instead, the story goes out of its way to put him at the mercy of Gaston, and shoehorn in an attempted murder plot to really turn everyone against him – it’s bizarre.
Medium quibbles:
- Gaston went from being a well-liked, athletically inclined dude to a literal predator and murderer. Belle was a beautiful status symbol in the original movie, but she becomes literal game to Gaston in the remake, as he refers to her as prey, or something to be hunted. When Maurice gets in-between him and Belle, Gaston punches him in the face and leaves him out in the forest to be eaten by wolves?! What does this add to the story?! Gaston wasn’t right for Belle because he wasn’t kind and didn’t intellectually stimulate her, but that nuance is wasted on the remake, turning him into a full-blown vengeful villain that will literally kill Belle’s family to get what he wants.
- The first time Belle is brought to her room, there is this long panning shot showing off how nice it is, and she comments, in wonder, how she thinks its beautiful. They had the fucking nerve to play “Home” in the background of this scene, completely ignoring the original context of the song is sadness and despair. But go off, I guess…
The Big Enchilada:
This is where my notes went from eh????? to WHAT THE FUCK, so be prepared. How someone with enough emotional maturity to write Perks can make the Beast into such an abusive asshole is so fucking beyond me, I’m still trying to process it.
Beauty and the Beast is a romance at heart, which you would never know by watching this movie, as Belle and the Beast have so little chemistry it’s painful. This might be because the Beast is abusive to Belle at every turn in the beginning, making the pivot from enemies to lovers so completely unbelievable it’s shocking. The remake is already at a deficit as the CGI Beast is terrifying, in contrast with the cartoon, which has the ability to make the Beast cuddly with big eyes and an expressive face. But they still decide to take all of the Beast’s inner conflict out of the remake, remove his agency completely out of the relationship with Belle, and make him supremely unlikable in every interaction they have together.
There are a few scenes that illustrate this, starting with the dinner invitation scene:
In the original, the Beast sees the pain he’s inflicted by pulling Belle away from her father, and offers her a tour of the castle and a bedroom instead of a prison cell. He also invites her to dine with him, although he could have gone about it wayyyy better. He confides in his staff that she is beautiful, and he realizes she can break the spell, but he doesn’t know how to appeal to her. His staff give him tips on how to be charming and not so intimidating. He is receptive, but overwhelmed, because he hasn’t had to interact with any other human in years. When he discovers she doesn’t plan on eating with him, his anger takes over because she refused his hospitality, and he’s a king, so how dare she? The staff try to help him appear genteel, cause again, HE expressed interest in being appealing to her. When this doesn’t immediately work, he throws a massive tantrum and tells them not to feed her. When he looks at Belle later in the mirror, he hears the direct result of his actions as Belle is ranting to the wardrobe. He laments she’ll never see him as a human because his actions have pushed her away.
In the remake, it’s not the Beast’s idea to give Belle a room, or to invite her to dinner – it is his staff’s intervening that puts him in that situation in the first place. He doesn’t even want to get to know her because she’s a daughter of a thief, and that’s somehow below his current social status of recluse animal/human hybrid. His staff persuade him to give Belle a chance as they’re all invested in breaking the spell because they’ll turn into furniture if they don’t! They give him tips to manipulate her into opening the door, he tries it, it fails spectacularly, he gets angry and he leaves – but not before calling his staff idiots… I appreciate he’s not as physically violent in this version, but he just acts like he couldn’t be bothered with Belle. He does spy on her from the mirror, but she looks bewildered. He doesn’t know if she’s lonely, or missing her father, or what… There’s no indication that how he treated her in that moment has pushed her further away. Then he just stares at the rose like, “Well, shit, this ticking time bomb is still ticking!”. It’s completely self-focused.
Oh, and then Mrs. Potts tries to handwave the Beast’s behavior away with, “People say a lot of things in anger. It is our choice whether or not to listen,” which, excuse me, WHAT THE EVERLOVING FUCK DOES THAT MEAN?! You are in charge of how to interpret someone’s actions, and you could just choose to ignore when they are being abusive?? I CAN’T. She also tries to gaslight Belle into seeing how great the Beast is when Belle has had zero positive interactions with the dude since she’s been there. The wardrobe brings it up in the original, but this is after he’s offered Belle a room and invited her to dinner himself, not by his staff…
The west wing scene and the Beast turning into less of a dick:
In the original, the Beast himself tells Belle not to go to the west wing. Her curiosity brings her there, because she wants to understand more about him and what he is hiding. She’s invading his space knowing full well that she is invading his space. When she is discovered, she’s about to fuck around with something that is literally tied with the Beast’s livelihood. His anger is disproportionate, but justified, and you see that he immediately regrets his reaction after she runs away from him. That’s why he goes after her. Belle watches him risk his life to save her even though she broke a promise to him, so she decides to repay the favor by bringing him back. They fight while she’s trying to clean his wound, and they’re both right in their perspectives, but the Beast acknowledges that yes, his temper got the best of him – he realized that the moment she bolted. Belle then rewards his selfless act by thanking him, which sets his entire transformation in motion.
He gives her the library because he expresses interest in doing something to make her happy, and he vocalizes he’s falling in love with her. He’s delighted by her reaction. During the ballroom scene, the way he looks at her, you can see he absolutely adores her. He asks, “Are you happy here with me?” because he loves her, and her well-being is the most important thing.
In the remake, the staff tell Belle not to go to the west wing because it’s a storage area. She wanders over there anyway, for whatever fucking reason, and takes a glance at the rose behind the glass. The Beast finds her looking at it and gets mad at her, even though he never told her not to visit him in the west wing, and she didn’t fuck around with the rose. When she runs away he doesn’t even look like he cares. There is no reason for him to go after her, and there is no reason for her to help him back to the castle other than the plot told them to do it. She doesn’t help him with his wounds, and the staff are the ones to thank her for returning him. She even asks the staff why the fuck they care about him, because he’s such an asshole. They justify his behavior because he had a cruel father, and damn themselves to his fate because they didn’t stop a literal monarch from raising his son. Belle continues to take care of him because she pities him? He repays her kindness by insulting her taste in literature.
He doesn’t even show her the library because he knows she likes books, he does it because he wants her to read “better” books. Then he makes one joke about not reading Greek and THAT IS WHAT MAKES BELLE SWOON. THE FUCKING GREEK BOOK JOKE. I mean, I sort of get it, I fell in love with my ex because he made a bread pun, but he hadn’t been continually abusive to me up until that point. Belle starts to read out loud to him, and that’s supposed to be the event that incentives the Beast to be better? Even while Belle is singing about how much he’s changed (he hasn’t), he throws a boulder of snow in her face. The cherry on top of this sundae is his stoic question after they dance, “It’s foolish, I suppose, for a creature like me to hope that one day he might earn your affection?” which not only sounds like complement fishing, it is primarily motivated by breaking the curse! Only after she gives an indifferent answer does he ask if she’d be happy at the castle.
Oh god, and the death scene is cut off in the middle because we have to watch 2 minutes of the staff members permanently turning into furniture, which, like, I wouldn’t think they’d want to castrate the emotional climax of the movie, but this whole thing is an exercise on how to fuck something already good up.
This movie fails so spectacularly at this basic love story, I can’t begin to justify its existence. I wouldn’t recommend this to anybody. If you want to watch new Alan Menkin content, watch Galavant, because this movie just pissed me off.
It was bold of Disney to end it with a beastiality joke, though.
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