La bella e la bestia

As much as it pains me to see movies being remade, I find that I am able to give Disney a pass for this. I thoroughly enjoyed Beauty and the Beast . I have been a fan of Emma Watson's, since first watching the "Harry Potter" series several years ago. It is evident she is not a strong singer, but her singing was pleasant enough. I think I doubted Disney's decision to cast her as Belle, but after seeing the movie, I feel as if those doubts have been put to rest.

I also thought the rest of the casting was well done. Dan Stevens of Downton Abbey fame was great as The Beast (in this version, he even gets to sing a song) and Kevin Kline was great as Maurice, Belle's father. Emma Thompson never fails to impress me. She was one of the people I was extremely glad was cast in this film. She did Angela Lansbury proud. Josh Gad (Lefou) is perhaps most famous for portraying the lovable snowman, Olaf, in Disney's 2013 animated film, "Frozen" (although I knew him mainly from the raunchy Broadway show, "Book of Mormon," but that's a story for another time). Luke Evans (Gaston): I am not as familiar with him; the only film of his I've seen is "Dracula: Untold." He was pretty good as well. Ian McKellen and Ewan McGregor were wonderful as usual. The one I was impressed with the most, was 6-time Tony winner Audra McDonald. I have been a fan of hers since the year 2000 when I first watched Disney's "Annie", and she never fails to amaze me with her consistency and overall talent. Her voice was, by far, the best in the movie.

The cinematography and special effects were obviously all there. When you get a huge company like Disney behind a product, they naturally have all the money and the resources available to make the best quality motion picture in the technical aspects that they want.

Give this movie a try, it was truly beautiful.

As an unabashed fan of the 1991 film, I came to this version ready for a fight -- more than one! Who dares tamper with a classic? But bit by bit, and moment by moment, I was enchanted all over again: the human performances "fleshed out" the old animated ones; the coggier Cogsworth and more limited Lumiere charmed me afresh with their differences from memory. The new songs, though surprising, fit remarkably well, and I never felt that the score missed a beat. And when all was added up, the sum was far more than any of the new and varied parts: this is a fresh masterpiece, beginning as a riff but ending with something much much more than a "cover" -- if Disney can do this as well with its other planned live-action/CGI versions, then count me in. This is a brilliantly-crafted film that honors and yet moves beyond its beloved original.

Adapting Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve's original French story about a beauty and her beast is no easy task. In the wrong hands, this romance between a girl and her captor could easily come across as creepy – Stockholm Syndrome parading as a fairy tale. Disney managed to pull it off in 1991: its sublime animated version, with its tender heart and gorgeous music, has rightly become a classic. 25 years later, has the studio managed to capture lightning in a bottle again, this time in live-action format?

Well… not quite. To be fair, this brand-new incarnation of Beauty And The Beast, directed by Bill Condon, has a great deal going for it. It makes a good case for updating the tale with more modern sensibilities. The film is beautifully performed and designed, and there's plenty of fun (and nostalgia) awaiting fans of its animated predecessor. But it never feels quite as effortless or natural in telling its story. While there is magic here, it's tough to shake the feeling that it's engineered, not organic – that it grazes rather than grabs the heart.

The film centres on Belle (Emma Watson), a bookish, resourceful young lady who's never really fit into her little French village. She hankers for adventure – but gets more than she bargained for when her father (Kevin Kline) stumbles into a forgotten castle and becomes a prisoner there. After trading places with her dad, Belle gets to know the inhabitants of the castle: a surly, fearsome Beast (Dan Stevens) and a host of living household appliances and furniture, all of them living in fear that they will never be free of the curse that has robbed them of their humanity.

On its own merits, Beauty And The Beast is a decent effort. Condon's film is the Hollywood blockbuster at its most efficient, from its photo-real fantasy castles to splashy musical numbers teeming with life and colour. The screenplay, by Stephen Chbosky and Evan Spiliotopoulos, is a canny adaptation of familiar material, particularly when it comes to adding layers to its characters. Belle has more agency in ways big and small – she's the one in control even when she (voluntarily) becomes the Beast's prisoner and, in a small but important scene, she shares the gift of independent thinking by teaching a village girl how to read.

Similarly, the many relationships in the film are given welcome depth. Belle and the Beast find common ground in books and feeling out-of-place, even in the places they call home. We're furnished with hints as to why the household servants – including suave candlestick Lumiere (Ewan McGregor), jittery clock Cogsworth (Ian McKellen) and motherly kettle Mrs. Potts (Emma Thompson) – are more invested in breaking the curse that befell them. LeFou's (Josh Gad) devotion to the pompous Gaston (Luke Evans) goes, quite logically, from subtext to text, though in a way that hardly warrants the firestorm of controversy that has erupted in conservative circles over Disney's 'gay agenda'.

That said, other aspects of this remake yield more mixed results. The Beast's very real, very human eyes provide emotional connection and depth in a way that animation can't fully approximate. But burying Stevens beneath layers of CGI and prosthetics also means that the Beast can occasionally come across as a stiff, oversized teddy bear, lacking the fluidity of expression of his animated counterpart. The same goes for the household servants: ironically, efforts to make them more 'realistic' end up bleeding them of life and personality.

It's the same story with the film's music. Some of Alan Menken and Howard Ashman's iconic original numbers are thoughtfully re- imagined: 'Be Our Guest' is a joyous explosion of camp colour, featuring welcome nods to movies like Cabaret and Singin' In The Rain; and 'Gaston' morphs into a lively bar-storming number that practically demands applause at the end.

But the new songs, penned by Menken and Tim Rice, are more nice than necessary. 'How Does A Moment Last Forever' is lovely but lacks impact. 'Evermore' – a new anthem for the Beast – will no doubt become a cabaret standard but is badly served in the context of the film: it feels overwrought and a bit silly, lessening rather than heightening the dramatic tension at that particular moment.

Performances across the board are good, as you would expect from a cast of this calibre – though it's hard not to wish for accomplished performers like Thompson, McKellen and Broadway legend Audra McDonald (playing the part of an operatic, narcoleptic wardrobe) to be better served by both script and special effects. Watson, who has proved a better advocate than actor in recent years, is a perfectly credible (though hardly riveting) Belle. Stevens does a decent job with a challenging part, while Evans convincingly conjures up both swagger and menace.

It's evident in every frame that everyone involved in Beauty And The Beast worked mightily hard to prove that transforming one of Disney's most iconic movies into a live-action extravaganza is worth the effort. They don't always pull it off: the film gets about as many things wrong as it does right, and it most certainly doesn't surpass the animated classic in quality. But it tells a familiar tale well enough – enough, one suspects, to win over fans old and new.

First and foremost, this is a movie for children. The original was a movie for children. I'm surprised at so many scathing and very negative reviews I've read here.

The sets and costumes are beautiful. The music is classic and treated with respect. It takes a very classic Disney animated film and fleshes it out with additional character development and enhanced songs. Many little Disney princesses will watch it over and over again, just like the original animated version.

No movie is perfect, but I found it charming and produced with a great deal of love.

"Beauty and the Beast" retells the Disney's version of the French fairy-tale written by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve and published in 1740. The story is very similar to the magnificent 1991 animation and highly attractive. However this 2017 version is uneven, with the most boring songs that anyone could imagine and reasonable acting despite the great names in the cast. But the top-notch Computer Graphic Imagery (CGI) and the cinematography are worthwhile watching. Keep awake along the musical scenes and you may like and be surprised by this version. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "A Bela e a Fera" ("The Beauty and the Beast")