This is a very self-aware attempt by Hollywood studios to make a movie: we have a script. The characters that they portray are not those of court entertainers (except the opera singer), or of playmates to the aristocratic children, but of aristocrats themselves. But the execution had me wondering if I was watching Harry Potter.Īfter all the anthropomorphised objects in the castle are restored to their human selves, we see a number of token actors of colour.
Both Belle and the Beast are given a background story that was absent in the previous versions and the source text. Here, the Beast is well-read, and does not plot with Lumiere, Cogsworth, Mrs Potts, and the rest, to woe Belle. There are a few changes from the 1991 animated version. I like to call these rehashed films “fillers” - a yield of a dearth of original ideas, and an excess of resources. She leaves an enchanted rose behind, the falling petals of which are a ticking bomb to signify the time the Beast is left with to learn to love and be loved in return. Then there is the Beast, an erstwhile handsome and selfish prince, who is cursed by an enchantress for refusing to help her because of her appearance. The local boor, Gaston - handsome, but wickedly conceited - pursues her for her beautiful face, and is repeatedly rejected. For the uninitiated, Beauty and the Beast, based upon the fairy tale by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont, is about a young, progressive-minded, book-loving woman, Belle, who longs to escape her provincial surroundings. Summarising the plot seems trite, but then, so are these formulaic offerings from Hollywood. To borrow a cliché that is used everywhere to describe this film, it is a tale as old as time.