ANOTHER Beauty and the Beast Review

[IllinoisJones]

In its ongoing effort to capitalize on past success by freshening up a classic from its library, Disney puts a new live action spin on its tale as old as time. While I can't put this film on the same level as the last conversion of animated to live action, The Jungle Book, I thoroughly enjoyed B and the B. The costumes and practical sets are pretty spectacular and the choreography and musical numbers achieve Broadway level status at times. Alan Menken's new songs fit in well with the originals. The cast is lead by a fairly auto tuned Emma Watson but it's a movie and not the stage, so it didn't bother me that her voice was digitally enhanced especially with her strong interpretation of Belle. I felt Dan Stevens as Beast was just scary enough and seemed to hit all the right notes. Luke Evans as Gaston was phenomenal and Josh Gad as LeFou probably wasn't used enough. Overall, the script fleshed out some stories the animated film didn't touch and improved everything for me. For example, we find out why the Beast is so beastly before his transformation from human to monster and why the staff was lumped in with his punishment. There are, of course, some subtle differences between the two films. They all worked for me. Where the movie falls a bit is in some of the clumsy CG and visual effects work, especially on the Beast. I would have much rather had a practical costume than some of the cartooning that occurs. I have similar complaints with some of the other enchanted characters which at times took me out of the film. I didn't feel the dark wolf scenes in the forrest were anymore dark and frightening than the original however the end is a little different and might be too much for some small eyes. 8 year old Tara and 11 year old Evan had no problems with it. Overall I felt Director Bill Condon met the difficult task of providing an entertaining live action version of a legendary animated film. 3 1/2 dancing dishes out of 5.