SwiftBlog

The familiar basics of the plot are the same as Maurice, Belle’s father (Kevin Kline, whose sharp skills as a farceur are barely employed), is imprisoned by the Beast inside his forbidding castle for plucking a rose from his garden and Belle eventually offers to take her papa’s place. Meanwhile, the enchanted household objects conspire to cause the odd couple to fall for each other and break the spell that allows both them and their master to return to human form again. 

There are efforts by screenwriters by Stephen Chbosky (“The Perks of Being a Wallflower”) and Evan Spiliotopoulos (“The Huntsman: Winter’s War”) to provide emotional links between Belle and her Beast involving their mutual absent mothers that don’t add much substance. And, in an ineffectual attempt to embolden her feminist cred, Belle invents a primitive version of a washing machine. Such additions don’t hold a candelabra to tried and true sequences as when the Beast, in a wooing mood, reveals his vast library of books to Belle. One can only describe the reaction on Watson’s face as she takes in this leather-bound orgy of reading material as a biblio-gasm. 

That is not to say there isn’t much to admire, especially with director Bill Condon’s dedication to injecting the lushness and scope of tune-filled spectacles of yore into the world of IMAX 3-D. His resume, which includes penning the adapted screenplay for “Chicago” and calling the shots behind the camera for “Dreamgirls” and the final two FX-propelled “Twilight” films, shows he knows his way around both musicals and special effects. Watson might be at her best right out of the gate while performing the song “Belle,” which begins with her bemoaning her provincial existence in a small town and ends with her singing on high amid lush green hilltops dotted with yellow wild flowers while channeling Maria in “The Sound of Music.” That the camera lingers upon the freckles on her pert nose is an added bonus.

Alas, once she is ensconced in the massive gothic castle, Watson is more reactive than pro-active as her slightness causes her to be swallowed up by the ornate scenery and upstaged by the chatty servants in the guise of furniture and knickknacks. I was a little nervous about how the voice cast including Ewan McGregor as the urbane French-accented candle man Lumiere and Ian McKellen as the chubby nervous mantel clock Cogsworth would fare. But they all do a bang-up job with the stand-out number “Be Our Guest,” the so-called “culinary cabaret” where plates, platters and utensils turn into performers in a Busby Berkeley-style spectacular. Condon wisely takes the choreography to the next level with nods to everything from “West Side Story” and “Les Miserables.” Meanwhile, Gad and Evans—both musical theater veterans—pull off the humorous pub number “Gaston” with playful aplomb.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7s7vGnqmempWnwW%2BvzqZmq52mnrK4v46bnJqtpK56orrDZquhnV2XsqK%2F02ZpaWln