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Beauty and the Beast – Better Than Expected: A Spoiler-Free Review

It may be a bit early for a review but we all know the story of Belle and her Beast so I wouldn’t be ruining anything, and with Beauty and the Beast officially hitting the $1 billion mark, I’m obviously not the only person who loved this Disney classic.

Rest assured that Belle is however not my favourite Disney princess so I will try to be as objective as possible, but when they make the live action movie of Jasmine and her boyfriend (they’re making too much money not to remake everything), don’t bother to believe me, I’m going to love it.

A tale as old as time: Belle wants to get out of her ‘poor provincial town’, travel and see the world but instead, she gets trapped in a castle, marries a Prince and doesn’t go anywhere. But hey, at least the castle is stunning.

Director Bill Condon spent $160 million on Beauty and the Beast and made it back in the first weekend, so it was absolutely worth it: the sets are detailed and the visuals are fantastic. They were actively trying to create a magical experience and they’ve accomplished it.

Beauty and the Beast starts with a palace ball and the palace is so ornate and beautiful that you can immediately tell where all the money went – that is, except for the cast that includes Sir Ian McKellen, Ewan McGregor and Emma Thompson. With all that money you would think they could give Emma Watson some proper clothes; she spends the entire movie sleeveless (with a little cape) in the freezing European winter.

The all-star cast also includes Josh Gad who is fantastic as LeFou but Gaston was my favourite casting choice. Luke Evans’ Gaston is even more despicable than the cartoon version.  Conservative people who complained about LeFou being gay will be very disappointed that it wasn’t as big a deal as they were trying to make it. Children see more scandalous things in adverts and on the internet.

I personally have very little to complain about as they pretty much kept to the nostalgic base that us older folk needed. In fact, I didn’t feel the new songs were necessary, but I liked the little trick that the Beast performs with his magic map.

I assumed Emma Watson would talk-sing like Selena Gomez does but she’s a lot better than I expected! I wouldn’t mind her doing more singing roles. There were moments where I thought she could have reacted more such as during the ‘Be Our Guest’ dinner scene and the wolves attacking the Beast scene. For a minute I thought she’d gone to the Kirsten Stewart school of acting, but she got better from when she saw the library onward and ultimately was well-suited as Belle.

Overall impression: Beauty and the Beast was the animated version brought to life in the most literal sense as they didn’t change much, but it was made even more beautiful. I might watch this numerous times as I did when I was a child. A billion dollars well deserved.

jeslyn

Jeslyn is a perpetual sloth, but more importantly, a chocolate and wine aficionado. She likes to write sometimes, read most of the time and watch TV all of the time.

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