La Belle et la Bête: une 30e célébration

I'm thinking they just tried to do too much here. They tried to combine storyboards, animated version footage and live actors to tell the story again, but it was too much of a mish-mash to make sense. Including the small live audience who applauded at the strangest times. Disappointing too that the couple never danced together nor kissed! Not very romantic. Josh Groban had gushed about the amazing costume/contraption they built for him but it didn't come off well with him peeking out from underneath. And as much as I admire H. E. R.'s talent I thought having her come down the stairs playing her electric guitar was just weird.

This is obviously mostly a vehicle to showcase how progressive ABC and Disney have become through the casting of H. E. R as Belle. H. E. R. delivers here, using the "R" in her acronym to reveal her beautiful eyes, shedding her edgy persona to temporarily become a Disney princess, and she is a great sport at it. Her exotic looks and exotic voice give Belle the texture we need in 2022. And as a bonus, H. E. R gives us a taste of her electric guitar skills at the end which is a nice surprise. At 25, she is only two letters away from EGOT, so I hope this live stage experience will open the doors for her to win a Tony next. Josh Groban performs as expected with his soaring voice, and the supporting cast, specifically Martin Short and Joshua Henry as Gaston, are awesome to watch. Overall, this is a good Christmas-time production, but the progressiveness stops on the surface, as deep down the "Beauty and the Beast" storyline is quite problematic. If you think about it, young girls should really be shielded from the dangerous messages lurking in this horror disguised as a classic Disney fairly tale. It's insidious.

Would you rather watch the original Disney animated classic or would you rather watch portions of it, interrupted by commercials, live action sequences that are more about new choreography than the musical performances, interspersed with brief pieces about the creation and development of the orignal, perhaps accented with pop-up ads and scrolls on the bottom of the screen?

Some of the new performers are great talents. If only their talents were showcased better...and they were not lip synching!

In recent years we have been spoiled by some incredible live re-creations of musical classics that make this production suffer in comparison.

The parts that were live production were the best I've seen in a long while. The performances were amazing. This is why it was annoying when they would cut to the animated feature. I have mad love for the original but the back and forth just doesn't work for me. Either do a full live production or do the behind the scenes stuff and show the original movie. I feel the talent they had was wasted in the few brief performances they were given no matter how phenomenal those performances were (and they were fantastic!) Ps Rita Moreno was great with the behind the scenes into. I learned things I never knew and enjoyed that immensely!

I've seen a lot of crybabies in these reviews. If you feel the need to complain about the race of the people portraying the characters, you have problems. They were all talented. This wasn't meant to be a live action movie, they did that years ago. This was to show the work that went into it 30yrs ago, along with remembering the scenes in the original movie, and then watching them act out the most poignant scenes and songs of the film. What is so hard to understand about that? Too many people calling it confusing, there was nothing confusing. It was entertaining, reminiscent, and everyone who was apart of it did a great job. Stop reading into everything like it needs to be Oscar worthy before it receives praise. Not to mention if you have kids, they will enjoy it, it was wholesome, fun entertainment.