Beauty and the Beast

“Condon’s Beauty and the Beast delivers a strong female lead, but fails to break out of its nostalgic trappings.”

Title: Beauty and the Beast (2017)
Director: Bill Condon 👨🏼🇺🇸🌈
Writers: Original animated screenplay by Linda Woolverton 👩🏼🇺🇸 and live-action screenplay by Evan Spiliotopoulos 👨🏼🇬🇷🇺🇸 and Stephen Chbosky 👨🏼🇺🇸

Reviewed by Li 👩🏻🇺🇸

Technical: 3.5/5

I was a ‘90s kid. I had all the Disney VHS tapes in those padded white cases and I watched them on repeat. On any given Halloween, I was dressed up as Aladdin or Pocahontas. In other words—I’m the exact target audience for Disney’s entry into the industry-wide grab for Millennial nostalgia. So how does the live-action Beauty and the Beast stack up against our rose-tinted memories?

It’s mixed for me, as it seems to be for many other critics who point out the film’s visual opulence but contrast it with a confused interior world. Particularly jarring are the rehashed scenes lifted from the animated version, complete with the same blocking and line deliveries. But it’s in these wan mimicries where Condon’s Beauty and the Beast feels its most alien.

Luckily, the writers do pen some new material and I enjoyed the exploration of Belle’s backstory—particularly, the addition of why her mother went missing. It lends the narrative a much-needed presence of another woman, even if said woman is long dead and never appears onscreen. The other new bits, while fluffy, do give the audience a reprieve from the frustrating sense that this film is just riding on the coattails of the original.

If only Condon had chosen to be bolder! A fresh stance altogether could have really invigorated this classic tale. And I don’t use “classic” lightly; Beauty and the Beast lives on in our collective imaginations for a reason. At its core, the fantasy of falling in love with someone for their personality remains unblemished. No amount of clumsy retelling can remove that inner spark. So despite its flaws, I found myself genuinely moved by Condon's Beauty and the Beast, if inconsistently so.

Gender: 4.5/5
Does it pass the Bechdel Test? YES

Looking to ‘90s-era Disney for feminism is usually an exercise in futility. While the animated films do have a good track record of featuring strong heroines—Belle, Ariel, Jasmine, or Pocahontas all kick ass in their own ways—the very nature of requiring a Disney prince for a Happily Ever After has always been a tricky takeaway.

The latest Beauty and the Beast retains this built-in issue but tries hard as hell to modernize it. Emma Watson does a great job as Belle, even as her painfully British accent had me wincing for a film so reliant on a backdrop of pastoral France. Still, Belle occupies this film in full.

The rest of the cast, however, remain primarily male. Gaston (Luke Evans) and Maurice (Kevin Kline) receive the largest roles after Belle and Beast (Dan Stevens), while the smattering of Beast’s transformed house staff skew male with Lumière, Cogsworth, and Mrs. Potts—played by Ewan McGregor, Ian McKellen, and Emma Thompson, respectively—receiving the lion's share of dialogue.

Race: 3/5

Visible efforts are made to diversify supporting characters. But the notion of “diversity” is simplistic—literally, Black and white as we see no additions of Brown and/or Asian actors. Still, we can chalk that up to being a nod to French demography—most of France’s residents of color are North African or Black.

Why not consider the film’s setting of 1700s France when looking for racial diversity (or lack thereof)? Simple: This is a fairytale made for 2017. It should be developed for a 2017 audience, and the fact of it being a magical universe should make it at least as easy to accept people of color as talking candelabras.

With that in mind, Beauty and the Beast still falls far below where they could be with inclusion. The largest roles that go to non-white actors are Madame Garderobe, played by Audra McDonald (who is Black American), and Plumette, played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw (who is mixed-race South African and English). Both characters appear as household objects for the vast majority of their dialogue, only appearing as humans in the last scenes of the film.

A third Black character is Père Robert, played by Ray Fearson who is Black of Caribbean descent. As a villager his role is minor, but he does bring a more tangible sense of Beauty and the Beast not having an all-white cast.

Bonus for LGBTQ: +0.25

The film gets a small bump in this category for its director, Condon, who is openly gay. However, the film’s LGBTQ material itself is watered down to the point of negligibility.

Leading up to the film’s release, much was made of Condon’s statement that LeFou, played by Josh Gad, would receive a “nice, exclusively gay moment.” In actuality, however, the screaming subtext of Gad’s LeFou never amounts to anything concrete. Instead, LeFou exists as a stereotypical gay character—an effeminate, cisgender white male who lusts after his straight best friend.

In addition, we see a split-second scene that could also be considered queer. Jackson McHenry describes it on Vulture:

An enchanted wardrobe attacks a trio of Gaston’s henchman, forcing them into powder, wigs, and dresses. Two are disgusted, but the third smiles—a sort of gender-bending moment.

He goes on to describe what may be the “exclusively gay moment” Condon was referring to:

LeFou starts off dancing with a woman, and then strikes up with the dress-loving henchman. It’s certainly a moment, because it lasts for two seconds at the most. It’s gay, in the sense that two male characters are doing something that expresses affection, though it feels so platonic they might as well be shaking hands.

All in all, no LGBTQ characters are demeaned, but neither are they represented in any elevated way.

Mediaversity Grade: B- 3.67/5

Condon’s Beauty and the Beast delivers a strong female lead, but fails to break out of its nostalgic trappings. Where the original delivered a glittering, theatrical fairytale, its 2017 counterpart feels like a subdued ghost going through the motions. Luckily, it does acknowledge its modern audience by gently sprinkling in people of color and infusing Belle’s storyline with a bit more depth, but ultimately it hedges on all fronts. By playing it safe in every regard, Beauty and the Beast feels incomplete.

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Grade: BLiFebruary 4, 2018