Beauty and a beat dance movie#
(Weirdly, the movie reminded me of Jean-Pierre Melville’s movie The Silence of the Sea, in which the well-meaning francophile German officer, billeted with a French family during the Nazi occupation, earnestly suggests that they might yet find a kind of mutual regard, like the beauty and the beast.) It is a decent performance from Stevens, although as ever with this story, the moment when he is transformed back to handsome prince is a strange anticlimax. He is a bad-tempered old bachelor, yearning to be freed from his mask of ghastliness. The whole movie is lit in that fascinatingly artificial honeyglow light, and it runs smoothly on rails – the kind of rails that bring in and out the stage sets for the lucrative Broadway touring version.īeauty and the Beast: trailer for live-action adaptation starring Emma Watson Guardianīut the hills are alive with spells, and the poor Beast is miserable up in his crumbling castle. Gradually the grumpy, soppy old Beast falls in love with her and she with him.Įveryone warbles the classic 1991 showtunes by composer Alan Menken and lyricist Howard Ashman, and there is a sugar-rush outbreak of starry cameos at the very end, from A-listers who are given full status in the final curtain-call credits. Belle offers to be his prisoner in her father’s place. This is in fact a once handsome prince (played by Downton Abbey’s Dan Stevens), transformed into a monster by an enchantress as a punishment for his selfishness, while all his simpering courtiers were turned into household appliances such as candles and clocks. Disney now gives us a sprightly, shiny live-action remake of its 1991 animated musical fairytale, Beauty and the Beast, with Emma Watson as Belle, the elfin beauty from a humble French village whose poor old dad (Kevin Kline) is imprisoned by a wicked beast who lives in a remote castle. T he world’s most notorious case of Stockholm syndrome is back in cinemas.