Beauty and the Beast 2017 Review

Beauty and the Beast is a tale as old as time and the decision was made to turn another classic 90s Disney film into a live action movie. The last film to make this transition was The Jungle Book, which saw its second time as a live action remake and this time it was a box office hit; it ended up as the fifth top grossing movie of 2016.

Most of us will already know the tale from the original film; a young prince is cursed and then transformed into a beast for his selfish ways and he must find love before the last petal of the rose falls or he will become a monster forever. Belle is a beautiful, young, intelligent woman who does not fit in with her small town French life so she escapes by reading literature every single day.

What you might not know is that the star of Beauty and the Beast, Emma Watson, insisted that Belle be the inventor in the household, not just her father. This gave Belle's character another dimension and allowed her not just to be well read, but embrace worldly practicalities as well.

The soundtrack to this film is iconic, with songs that have travelled alongside us through childhood and lucky for us the director Bill Condon was working alongside Alan Menken who worked on the original score of the 1991 classic, which meant all the classic songs we have grown to love stayed in the new 2017 adaptation.

Emma Watson (Belle) had a light and delicate voice which was pleasing to the ear, and the music, for the most part was well sung (Luke Evans as Gaston had a superb voice), however towards the end of the film we hear a solo from the beast as he roams his castle in longing for his Belle, this scene was unnecessary and extremely cringe worthy, his voice was not up to par with the others and the song was mediocre at best, but do not let this deter you from seeing this spectacular re-make.

There was such an amazing cast line-up with Emma Watson as Belle, Dan Stevens as The Beast, Luke Evans as Gaston, Josh Gad as Lefou (who also played the voice of Olaf in Frozen), Emma Thompson as Mrs Potts, Ewan Mcgregor as Lumiere and Ian Mckellen as Cogsworth & many more.

This movie took you to a whole new world where you could immerse yourself in the strange, yet beautiful relationship which takes part between the prisoner and her captor, I guess you could call it a bad case of stockholm syndrome. The costumes were dazzling and the set was extremely well-designed especially the Beasts derelict castle.

Director Bill Condon, who is best known for on-screen musicals such as Dreamgirls and Chicago has delivered another masterpiece. Transitioning from a cartoon musical classic to a live action film can not have been an easy task, but this film blesses you with the same feelings as the original, you laugh and then end up shedding a tear, and surprisingly enough some of real life humour works out better as live-action.

Overall, the movie tugs at the heart strings and helps you escape reality, in my eyes, it couldn’t have been any better. So, take a seat, and be Disney’s guest of honour as you enjoy one of the best live-action Disney remakes.