Beauty And The Beast – Film Talk

Finally! The movie we have all been waiting for…. Beauty And The Beast! I’m talking about the new, highly anticipated, box-office-smashing, human adaptation of the Disney cartoon classic.

Starring Emma Watson, Dan Stevens and Luke Evans and directed by Bill Condon.

Where do I even begin?? First off, Beauty And The Beast happens to be my favourite Disney cartoon movie. It’s a “tale as old as time…” The story’s great, the music is fantastic and the beast (when he turns into a man) was my favourite Disney prince. C’mon, we all know we had a favourite Disney prince who we secretly had a crush on! Who was yours?

When I heard Emma Watson was playing Belle my first thought was shes perfect for the role and my second thought was can she sing? Turns out yes. Yes she can. She has a lovely voice.

When I heard Dan Stevens was playing the Beast I was super excited! I have been a fan of his since his Downton Abbey days and have loved his work since. (The Guest is a must see!)

Honestly this movie is like a dream come true for me because they then cast Luke Evens as Gaston. (Again, I am a huge fan. Hello Dracula Untold… *Sigh*). Sorry, getting off track…. Now Luke has an amazing singing voice and he encompasses Gaston PERFECTLY!

We have a lot of other big names attached to this film. Josh Gad as LeFou (Does he not sound exactly like the original voice of LeFou?!), Kevin Kline as Maurice, Ewan McGregor as Lumiere, Ian McKellen as Cogsworth and Emma Thompson as Mrs Potts. Now, I believe movies sometimes cast ‘the big hollywood names’ just to help promote and draw crowds into the film. For this movie, that is certainly not the case. Everyone of the actors cast played their characters perfectly and there were moments where you felt like you were back watching the cartoon. Casting on this movie was ‘on point’ so to speak.

Another thing that has to be mentioned is the set and costume design. It was incredible. The costumes were stunning (the yellow dress is just wow!) and the set for the village and the castle was perfect. The village felt cute and small and very picturesque. It didn’t seem real, ‘like something out of a book’….. The castle and the castle grounds were stunning also. There was a lot more garden to the castle than I remember in the cartoon but that makes sense since castles generally have rather large grounds and gardens.

That leads me onto my next point. This movie ties up a few loose ends that the original cartoon movie doesn’t. They really fleshed out this movie to include not more songs and cover the few plot holes. I’ll be honest and say I was a bit dubious when I heard there were going to be more songs. Like really? BUT….. They actually fitted really well in movie. They had the same tone to the film and actually added some extra depth to the whole movie. The beast getting his own song was actually really awesome because he never had one and it allowed us, the audience, to get a glimpse into how he really feels about Belle. Honestly it was worth just being able to here Dan Stevens sing!

We also get to find out what happened to Belle’s mother which was never explained in the original and we also get a bit more of a backstory on Beast. Why he was so arrogant and mean which wound him getting turned into a Beast in the first place.

I will say the one thing I did not like about this movie is the fact that I wasn’t a part of the production! *Sob*. Oh well, I’ll be part of the next one just you wait!

I could go on forever about this movie but I better stop it here. I would love to hear your thoughts on this movie. Did it live up to expectation? Did you like the changes to the story?