It was honestly underwhelming and I'm glad I purposefully tried to lower my expectations. It's the usual issues with remakes. There's a difficult if not impossible balance to strike between imitating the source material and branching out to something new. Some of the imitations were commendable, like Belle's yellow dress and the "Belle" song in the village. But others were rough. The animated classic can't be beat and wasn't. Maybe I'm just a sucker for new stuff, but I thought most of the changes from the 1991 original were all improvements: I liked the new songs, I liked the character Agatha, and I liked the magical travel book and the back story about Belle's mother. The new songs were so/so and the the big name actors who played the furniture/servants were sadly too similar to the originals to really shine. Maybe it was because he was given enough new material to be different from the original, but I thought Kevin Kline was quite good as Belle's father. All complaints aside, it was still pretty magical. And speaking of magical: Emma Watson. She was perfection. Everything she said and did and sang was perfect (thanks to the voice editing on the singing). I don't know if it was because she imitated the animated original so well or because she added something new, but I absolutely loved her. Her ability to interact with CG characters was impressive (good thing she had practice from Harry Potter), she was impeccably beautiful in a way that didn't seem unreal, and her acting made the film for me.
Review by Colonel BrandonBlockedParent2017-03-17T14:15:38Z
It was honestly underwhelming and I'm glad I purposefully tried to lower my expectations. It's the usual issues with remakes. There's a difficult if not impossible balance to strike between imitating the source material and branching out to something new. Some of the imitations were commendable, like Belle's yellow dress and the "Belle" song in the village. But others were rough. The animated classic can't be beat and wasn't. Maybe I'm just a sucker for new stuff, but I thought most of the changes from the 1991 original were all improvements: I liked the new songs, I liked the character Agatha, and I liked the magical travel book and the back story about Belle's mother. The new songs were so/so and the the big name actors who played the furniture/servants were sadly too similar to the originals to really shine. Maybe it was because he was given enough new material to be different from the original, but I thought Kevin Kline was quite good as Belle's father. All complaints aside, it was still pretty magical. And speaking of magical: Emma Watson. She was perfection. Everything she said and did and sang was perfect (thanks to the voice editing on the singing). I don't know if it was because she imitated the animated original so well or because she added something new, but I absolutely loved her. Her ability to interact with CG characters was impressive (good thing she had practice from Harry Potter), she was impeccably beautiful in a way that didn't seem unreal, and her acting made the film for me.