Mystery Guest Review: "Beauty and the Beast" (Disney, 2017)

I'm pretty stoked about this one; it's my first guest review. A very valued friend and kindred spirit hit me up on Messenger tonight and dropped me a short review for "Beauty and the Beast" that kind of blew me away of a couple of levels.

Firstly, I'd never have suspected this person of being a fan. I say that with ZERO judgment. I really do. I admit that I didn't grow up on Disney and the like (hell, children's films in general), but that doesn't mean that I am looking down on those that did. Even if it's a "one movie" kind of gig, well..........some movies just speak to us. I love that. That is the essence of the purity of what movies and stories in general mean to us. No one understands that better than I do. I live in a fantasy land. I always have.

Secondly, there's a lesson to be learned here about FANDOM. That is definitely a buzz-word with the Millennials today, but it's one I don't take a big steamy shit on. Everyone is a fan of something- horror, Disney, sports, guns, anime, Jesus, you name it. Sometimes, people will surprise you with the things that reside in their heart. Don't ever judge them. It's so shitty to do that. For Christ's sake, I am a loud and proud professional wrestling fan and I get so much shit for it...............and I don't give a flying fuck what anyone thinks about it. 

So, here we go. My good friend's review of the 2017 live-action "Beauty and the Beast":

There are some spoilers, though I left the important story line parts out. Shall I then? Here we go:

 It keeps true to the original with a few minor tweaks that I thought actually helped the story line a bit. All the music from the original was in the modern one (which I liked). This was the first animated movie to win an Academy award for me best original score, and multiple nominations by the way so good call. Plus they added a few songs not on the original. I assume they were in the Broadway versions by the styles of the songs.

Emma Watson started the movie as "Hey look, there's Hermione!", but by the end I only saw Belle. She did an amazing job in this film. Who ever cast Dan Stevens as the voice actor for Beast needs a raise because he was commanding yet vulnerable. Yet if it's the same person cast Dan Stevens the prince he changes back to needs a smack in the face. People literally laughed in the theater during his miraculous reveal at the end. Though I suspect his facial expression was a part of it. He had the face a 12 year old would make the first time he sees real boobs.

I'm not to sure how to word this next part but oh well. If you get butt hurt I'll give you an ice pack. Disney did some obvious ploys to show how progressive they are now days to show how obviously gay LeFou (Gaston's sidekick) was, to the point of me expecting him to come out of the closet by the ending. They also changed the ethnicity of 3 of the minor characters to black in the film (2 of which were in mixed race couples). Now I feel like there are people getting ready to start slapping keys on there keyboards firing back at me. I'm just pointing out that I noticed the change. Also I don't know the history of France during the Black plague era (early 1300's), but I don't think everyone would have just ignored that, just saying.

All in all I really enjoyed this remake. I do wish they would have gotten a different designer for the furniture people because I didn't really like the look of any of them. Though the voice acting for them was superb. They even got Sir Ian McKellen in a pivotal role. To end I'll say as someone who watched this on VHS more times than I wish to know growing up (bought the original on Blu-Ray for an amount I'm not proud of on amazon) and loved the original immensely, I was pleasantly surprised by how much of the feeling they captured from the original and yet still remained a retelling so to speak.