Beauty and the Beast offers stale retelling of tale as old as time

Beast (Dan Stevens) and Belle (Emma Watson) in Beauty and the Beast. Image courtesy Disney.

There are a number of problems plaguing the live-action version of Beauty and the Beast in theaters today, but the totality of the film’s issues is summarized in one simple statement: This movie never justifies a reason to exist independent of the original. There are a few differences in this one when compared with the 1991 animated classic, some character changes and a fattened up run time to make it appropriate for these sorts of adaptations. None of it, though, offers a significant artistic reason for Disney to reboot Beauty and the Beast. It  banks on nostalgia to ride through some placid waves of mediocrity, trading excellence for subpar exchanges.

The troubles start from the get-go with a retelling of the tale of how a young prince (Dan Stevens) and his loyal staff (consisting of Ewan McGregor, Ian McKellen, Emma Thompson, Audra McDonald, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Nathan Mack and Stanley Tucci) receive the curse that turns them into the titular Beast and a collection of personified furniture and knickknacks. It's a longer rendition than the animated one, acted out by the characters in a way that does not align with the voiceover narrative going on at the moment. That points to the heart of the problem with 2017's Beauty and the Beast; you the story doesn’t change, it just has more to it at a lesser quality. More is somehow less and yet still the same.

So what do audiences get with the extra 45 minutes of screen time with Beast, Belle (Emma Watson), Garcon (Luke Evans), LeFou (Josh Gad) and the kooky servants of the decrepit castle? They receive more backstory explaining why Beast is as he is (the reason is a dead mother, because Disney can't not have a dead parent). They find out why Belle's father (Kevin Kline) is a single father (the reason is yet another dead mother). They get a few more songs thrown in, none of which hold a candle to the exceptional numbers ported over from the original. They have more time to discover plot holes and think about how weird it is to eat from a spoon that was a person. They generally get useless content that provides no greater understanding of Beauty and the Beast. That is, except, for one change concerning the characterizations of Beast and Garcon. This version widens the personality gap between the two, turning Beast into a curmudgeon instead of a cold-hearted brute and cranking up Garcon's villainy to cartoonish levels. Beast is now a misunderstood loner, while Garcon is the jock who takes the bullying several steps beyond what is reasonable. I can understand the motivation to avoid the moderate similarities of the two characters found in the first Beauty and the Beast that gives some logic to Garcon’s actions, but the way the result pushes it so far to the other end the narrative arcs get bumped away in the process. All of that focus on those two leaves little else for poor Belle to do but sit and watch as the men fight. There are 45 more minutes to work with, and the filmmaker couldn't spare additional time to add depth to Belle’s story.

The most distracting thing about this Beauty and the Beast is the visual divide between Watson's Belle and the CGI rendering of Stevens' Beast. The characters never look quite right standing next to each other, the poor quality of Steven's CGI character clashing greatly against Watson. A few action scenes in particular make Beast look like a meh video game character as he leaps awkwardly from one spire to the next like a drunk King Kong. It kills any sense of verisimilitude between the two characters, putting one in a real world while banishing the other to a computerized realm.

Aside from all that, there are precious few differences between the 1991 Beauty and the Beast and its 2017 followup; it has almost everything the original does, but done slightly to largely worse. This new version isn't capable of standing on its own, nor does it seem to want to be anything beyond a real version of the animated classic. Riding on coattails is an OK strategy for financial success – and it will probably do more than fine at the box office – but a terrible one for earning a cinematic legacy.

Review: Two out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: PG

Run time: 129 minutes

Genre: Fantasy

Ask Away

Target audience: People who have really, really fond memories of the original.

Take the whole family?: A few scenes get a little heavy, but on the whole the material is safe enough for kids.

Theater or Netflix?: Just wait for it to come to you and avoid the price gouging.

What up with LeFou?: There's apparently been a decent amount of hubbub over Josh Gad's LeFou, who is apparently gay per Gad. Despite some shouting from certain countries, the movie minimizes his character’s sexual orientation and makes it largely a non-issue. The only scene that offers a direct indication of LeFou’s sexuality lasts for about five seconds and is nowhere near salacious. There is almost nothing to any of this, because Disney prefers to stay well within the boundaries of social progression.

Watch this instead?: Go dig out the DVD of the original and watch it a few more times.

Shining a light into moral darkness

Rachel McAdams, Michael Keaton and Mark Ruffalo in a scene from "Spotlight." Image courtesy Open Road Films.

The remarkable and thrilling “Spotlight” could have taken the easy way out in its retelling of a deep, complicated investigation into a series of child abuse cases perpetrated by Catholic priests and hidden by church officials. Instead of taking the easy route and keeping the blame on the church, the film instead shines a metaphorical light at a society that quietly condones the behavior; as the film explains it, the lawyers, cops, community and even the newspaper investigating the allegations are to blame. From the film’s perspective, it takes a village to fail a child.

The newspaper in question is the venerable Boston Globe, the most well-known newspaper in New England. After a quick trip to a police station in 1976 – a scene used to set up the ensuing reporting – “Spotlight's” action picks up in the Boston Globe office circa 2001 amid a time of great tumult for the paper. New editor Marty Baron (Liev Schrieber) is already talking budget cuts to reduce the expenses of a paper losing its readership steadily, and those cuts could include the titular Spotlight team, an secret investigatory unit overseen by Ben Bradlee Jr. (John Slattery) and consisting of editor Robby Robinson (Michael Keaton) and reporters Mike Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo), Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams) and Matt Carroll (Brian D'Arcy James).

The Spotlight unit usually selects its own stories to dig into – those stories are then kept secret even within the Globe's newsroom – but Schrieber pushes an article about alleged sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests. The proposition is met with some resistance from the staff, many of whom grew up Catholic and are cognizant of the church's influence in the area; as one character points out, a majority of the Globe's subscribers are Catholic. Still, the Spotlight team inquires about the allegations, talking with victims, a psychologist, and lawyers involved with settlements involving the church (Jamey Sheridan and Billy Crudup). They also work with an eccentric attorney (Stanley Tucci's Mitchell Garabedian) who represents a number of clients abused by priests and claims he has proof the scandal reaches to the head of the city's diocese, Cardinal Bernard Law (Len Cariou). The reporting starts off with a handful of priests, but the journalists find themselves going down the proverbial rabbit whole as the research deepens and the number of priests involved increases exponentially.

The story is horrifying in its nature, and “Spotlight” never pulls its punches when discussing what exactly happened to these victims. The details as described in the film are heart wrenching, as is the outline of how the priests preyed upon the children. As one character says while listing the step-by-step details of how his priest groomed him, “How do you say no to God?” The statement alone is terrifying, as is the empty promises made by church officials in that very first scene at the police station in 1976 after a parent is dissuaded from pressing charges against a priest: “This will never, ever happen again.”

And yet it does, again and again and again and again for decades and to hundreds of children throughout the greater Boston area. “Spotlight” offers all of its sympathy to the victims of those actions; everyone else, however, has blood on their hands. The church is castigated repeatedly for allowing the abuse to happen and shifting priests from one parish to another to hide the allegations; the state is guilty of looking the other way whenever allegations arose; attorneys representing the church and the victims share guilt for making money from the settlements; and the community deserve scorn for pretending the problem wasn't there. Even the Globe is called out in “Spotlight” for ignoring evidence sent to it years before the investigation actually started.  

Director Tom McCarthy and co-writer Josh Singer do marvelous work setting up the atmosphere in which deference to the church is mandatory so they can show how much effort is required to report on this story. They focus on the process of breaking through the wall that covers basic research and people skills to political haggling, bartering and outright bullying when needed. The process makes for fascinating cinema because of how difficult it can be to get people to do the right thing.

Not that the reporters are men and women filled with an overabundance of courage and bravery; “Spotlight” portrays them as clever, resourceful professionals committed to doing their job and nothing more. They are human, prone to fears of their family’s safety and outright anger as the revelations become more and more horrifying. This is an issue that is worthy of righteous anger, but “Spotlight,” to its credit, never succumbs to that temptation; its mission, like the one the reporters take, is to tell the story and let the facts speak for themselves.

Review: Four and a half out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: R

Run time: 128 minutes

Genre: Drama

Ask Away

Target audience: Newspaper nerds and anyone down for a well-executed investigatory flick.

Take the whole family?: Although the film isn't graphic about the content, the information it does provide will bother younger kids. Early teens and older should be fine though.

Theater or Netflix?: Good enough to justify a theater trip.

Academy Award odds?: It's among the favorites for the top prize – although a ton can and probably will change after the nominations come out – and director Tom McCarthy could get a nomination for directing and for Best Original Screenplay alongside co-writer Josh Singer. There's a good shot Mark Ruffalo and Michael Keaton become finalists for Best Supporting Actor, and Rachel McAdams might sneak in for Best Supporting Actress. All are uniformly well deserved nominations.

Watch this as well?: “All the President's Men” is the most obvious companion piece. However, definitely add in “Zodiac” – among the best movies to come out this millennium – and the smaller-scoped “The Paper” (also featuring Keaton) to your journalistic viewing list as well.