Beauty and the Beast Movie Review

Today, I’m going to give you my personal view on the movie, Beauty and the Beast.  Bear in mind, I’m talking about the live action one and not the animated one.

Overall, Beauty and the Beast was a good movie.  It looked beautiful from start to finish. Most of the casting choices were nearly spot on; most because not all of them were as good as they could have been.  An issue for me was the casting of Emma Watson as Belle, by the middle of the film; she did not seem amazed or awed with what was happening. Also, it did seem as if she was taking control of the character or fully becoming the character, I even had some friends call her “the Kristen Stewart version of Belle.”  This might be coming from the fact that the director, Bill Condon, also directed both of the Twilight: Breaking Dawn movies.

There were a few subplots added that were not in the original movie: along with changing the tempo of some of the songs and the motivation or story of some characters. This added to the movie and made it its own thing, apart from the animated version.  The characters in the live action version were far more relatable than those in the animated movie.

A few things that could have been different, is the colors would have more “poppy,” or brighter, in this movie than they were.  There was also a pacing issue in that some of the subplots dragged on for too long.  This knocks it down a peg; however, I would still rate it a little higher than the original.  To me, even though I know it’s not this good to a lot of people, it is an 8.5 out of 10.

Review by Austin Clemen