Tale as Old as Time

My family has videos of my brother and I as little kids. Sweet memories saved that I watched a lot as a kid. One of my favourites is during Christmas time, I'm probably a year and a bit and Beauty and the Beast comes on the tv. Little Nicole is completely entranced with the television, nothing could take my eyes off of it. When I was 4 my Grammy took me to see the stage show in Toronto, and my obsession grew even further. It spawned my musical theatre love and my love for BATB. Ever since then I have always cherished the movie, the characters, the songs, the artwork. Everything about it shaped me as a person. I had a connection with Belle, I wanted so badly to be like her, and to play her. She's my dream role. So when I heard that Disney was making a live action version of the movie I was excited and completely terrified. I didn't want the perfection that I grew up with to be changed, or re done. I'm also an extremely critical person, so I knew I would judge it extremely harshly.

While the trailers started to come out I had my doubts. The critiques started coming and I got really nervous that I wouldn't even want to see the show. To be fair I am always skeptical when it comes to my favourites being redone, especially when it's a movie musical. Hollywood's need to put names above capability always leaves a sour taste in my mouth. In this case the lovely Emma Watson was cast as Belle and I was, shall we say intrigued. She's a good actress, a great humanitarian and a very smart woman. Which makes for a great base for Belle, but I had no idea whether she had ever sang before. But I put my trust in Disney. I love the company, I love what they create, and I love their spirit and energy. So we come to today, I've just come home from the theatre so the film is fresh in my mind. And these are my thoughts.

The opening credits which are such an important part were done perfectly. I got chills when the music started. I love the back story they gave the Beast, instead of him being cursed as a child, which truthfully never really made sense, and that they showed the enchantress placing her curse. I miss the stain glass, but that's me nitpicking. I won't spoil it too much, but what they added to the curse was perfectly done. It made so much sense, especially when we're dealing with royalty. When it transitions over to Belle's village it is beautiful. They nailed the quaint little French village, filled with British people. I have a few complaints, first the library, it's like 5 books. It's supposed to be a book store, but again nitpicking. Also a detail in the movie was that Belle was the only person wearing blue, and that's another thing that makes her peculiar, yet in the first scene I counted at least 6 people all around her wearing her signature colour. Just a little detail that, as a crazy person I was disappointed with.

The Belle reprise was beautiful, when she ran onto the mountain; in record time I might add, I was stunned, it was so pretty. The wolf chase looked like it was plucked right out of the animated film, and done so well. As well as the dungeon scene. This is where Dan Stevens won me over as the Beast. His voice is perfect for it, and his acting was visible underneath all that CGI. Lumiere, who is always a charming character, was extra special due to the wonderful Ewan McGregor. I'm a big Ewan fan so I had a soft spot going in for his Lumiere. And he exceeded my expectations. A tear jerker moment for me, was when Lumiere was showing Belle to her room and Home from the stage show was playing in the background. I actually let out some tears. One of the best songs from the stage show, I'm just glad it got a little nod in the movie. The scene I think I was most disappointed over though was when Belle gets the library, it seemed very rushed. It didn't seem to come out of a place of affection from the Beast. And if you know me, you'll know how much I love Belle's green dress, and unfortunately that didn't make the cut. But, the library was absolutely breathtaking. I was disappointed with the ballroom scene as well. I felt it looked a little more like Hogwarts than the Beasts castle. But I will say Belle's ball gown looked way better when she was dancing, but when she was still I'm still not happy with it. I also hated all the jewelry they gave her.

Now I'm going to talk about the individual actors a little bit. I will just get it out of the way and start with the lady herself, Emma Watson as Belle. Emma was a part of my childhood, she graced out screens and grew up with us as Hermione Granger. I like Emma, I like what she stands for, I like how poised and charming she is, and I've enjoyed some of her other projects as well. Now as I said earlier Belle is my dream role, so I will admit that I would have been bitter over anyone getting the part that wasn't me, but whatever, I'll get over that. So, I enjoyed Emma's Belle. I didn't connect with her as much as I would have liked to, I just didn't feel that kinship with Belle that I normally do. I think it has to do with her singing. It was fine, she can carry a tune, and it definitely sounded sweet, but it just didn't have that spark that Belle has to have. I think it's hard to portray the story and the emotion fully when you aren't comfortable with your voice, and truthfully I think that's why it fell flat for me. Emma isn't a singer, I don't think anyone can fight me on that, and that's really the fault in her performance. She made a lovely Belle, she was strong, kind and gentle and fought for what she believed in. Unfortunately she isn't my Belle, but hopefully for the next generation they will fall in love with the character as much as I did.

I'll move on. Dan Stevens has the perfect voice for the Beast. If you weren't really paying attention you might have thought it was a British Robby Benson; the original Beast if you didn't know. His vocals were actually very beautiful. And the visuals paired with the song Evermore made me fall in love. I was sure I would miss If I Can't Love Her; which I did, but his performance of Evermore made it ok that the song wasn't there. He got the Beast down pat especially in the scene where he invites Belle for dinner and she refuses. It was literally the exact same as the animated film. Perfect. He had great mannerisms that just made the Beast come alive. Bravo Dan Stevens. You pulled through all that CGI business. At the end during the transformation I gasped in the theatre. When he turned and looked at her he literally looked exactly like the cartoon and I will forever be in love with that moment.

Now Luke Evans as Gaston. He was great. I don't really have many complaints. The story of him being a Captain in the war was a nice touch. His performance in The Mob Song was probably one of my favourite scenes. It was dark and gritty, and exactly what I wanted from Gaston. He's such an iconic character, and one that you love to hate, and I think Luke Evans played that perfectly. Josh Gad was a perfect LeFou. I don't think there's anyone else that I would want to see play that character. Again they added some great touches to his LeFou, they gave him a conscience and made him aware of what his companion was doing. In every other rendition he really is just a sidekick who plays along with Gaston's every move. Making LeFou gay was an interesting choice. The gay moment that everyone was hyping up so much was only visible if you didn't blink, and they could have done so much more throughout the entire film, or just made the clearly gay characters gay. Cough cough Lumiere and Cogsworth cough cough.

Lumiere and Cogsworth were done justice by Ewan McGregor and Ian McKellan. I mean you can't really go wrong. Emma Thompson as Mrs.Potts was lovely. I truthfully thought the creepy animation was going to put me off, but I loved her. She had the warm, motherly feeling that we want from Mrs.Potts, and her rendition of Beauty and The Beast was beautiful. Now we have Godra, I mean Audra McDonald. I love Madame de la Grande Bouche is one of my favourite characters in the show. She just has so much vibrato and gumption, and who better than to cast the amazing Audra as the opera singing wardrobe. I have nothing but positivity about her performance. It was over the top and loud and perfect. Nothing more. She has 6 Tony's people, she can do what she wants.

There is so much more that I could say about this film , but then it would be like 10,000 words and no one wants to read that. Overall I enjoyed it. I'm happy with the plot they added, filling in some holes that we all just sort of excepted in the animated film and stage show. Whenever new life is given to one of my childhood favourites I'm always excited. More people get to witness the magic. This movie wasn't a major disappointment, but I'm not sure I'll be running to watch it again. There were stunning visuals, beautiful costumes, and some really brilliant portrayals of classic characters. All in all I think Disney did a good job. I still think my dream cast needs to be revived on Broadway, but I'm sure we'll be in talks soon.