‘Beauty and the Beast’ Dry, Disappointing

The creators of “Beauty and the Beast” seem to have constructed the film to evoke and exploit millennial nostalgia. Many of the costumes, scenes, and songs are identical to those in the 1991 animated classic . The casting of Emma Watson, whose headstrong and book-loving Belle is in many ways a slightly modified version of her beloved “Harry Potter” character Hermione, may also be an appeal to the young adults who grew up watching her films. But the obvious pitfall of such a nostalgic remake is that it invites comparison to the original, and this film is at best a hollow imitation of the truly magical classic on which it is based.

Watching the early scenes of Belle ambling through her home village is the cinematic equivalent of returning to Disneyland for the first time in years and realizing that all the castles are made of plaster and coated in child-snot. The director has made little attempt to lend realism to this adaptation—sure, this is a children’s movie based on a fairy tale, but the glaring artificiality of each scene makes it difficult to become immersed in the fantasy. Why do only some characters have (atrocious) French accents? Why is the fleur-de-lis-laden interior of the Beast’s castle distinctly rococo while Belle’s mother is supposed to have died of the Black Death? Why do some of these costumes look like they could be purchased in a discount Halloween pop-up shop? Less cynical viewers may be able to overlook these flaws, but the lack of care evident in the film’s creation is disappointing.

Not only does the film fail to live up to the expectations set by its predecessor, but it also falls flat in its efforts to update itself for a 2017 audience. The unoriginal new backstories—more dead mothers, an evil father—do little more than stretch the runtime half an hour longer than needed. While the talking household objects were whimsical and cute as 2D cartoons, they are slightly unsettling in CGI: when the candelabra emerges with a human face protruding horror movie-style from his silver arm, it becomes difficult to forget that he and his cohorts are sentient souls deprived of fleshly form.

Perhaps the most disheartening aspect of the film is the fact that it had the potential to be poignant and politically relevant—consider, for instance, how the charismatic villain’s manipulation of the townspeople into a hateful and murderous mob could teach a subtle yet important lesson—but it instead only plays at social awareness. Director Bill Condon boasted that the film features interracial couples and gushed to “Attitude” magazine about some vague “exclusively gay moment.” The sprinkling of a few non-white background characters is always nice, of course, and a step in the right direction, but the inclusion of some non-speaking extras of color and two black actresses who spend most of the movie in raceless CGI form is hardly a victory for racial representation. And the so-called “gay moment,” which garnered controversy both in the U.S. and abroad, is a barely noticeable few frames of two men dancing in a ballroom surrounded by male-female couples.

Disney has no business bragging about its first openly gay character or its first “gay moment.” In fact, “Beauty and the Beast” may do more harm than good for BGLTQ representation, considering its gay character is LeFou (Josh Gad), the villain Gaston’s bumbling sidekick whose name is French for “the fool.” In fact, the decision to make a bad guy gay is far from revolutionary in Disney filmography. From Ursula in “The Little Mermaid” to the effeminate male villains in “The Lion King” and “Aladdin,” the villain characters in its films have often been “queer-coded,” reinforcing the notion that homosexuality is deviant or criminal. “Beauty and the Beast” also falls back on tried-and-true tropes about gayness, as LeFou’s ostensibly painful unrequited love for Gaston is played for cheap laughs. For much of the movie, LeFou is a joke: spineless, sycophantic, the target of slapstick violence and Gaston’s cruelty. The film ends as one might expect, with happy endings for the once-ostracized Belle and the Beast, but the only redemption or resolution LeFou receives is a split-second waltz with a faceless man.

Worse yet, “Vanity Fair” suggested that the choice to portray LeFou as openly gay may have been a “touching tribute” to Howard Ashman, the openly gay lyricist who co-wrote the soundtrack of the original film. Ashman was dying of AIDS as the 1991 film was being produced, and his illness is believed to have influenced the original film’s songs as well as its sympathetic characterization of the Beast, whose curse could be interpreted as a metaphor for the stigma and hopelessness felt by the victims of the AIDS epidemic. There could have been countless ways to incorporate more nuanced gay representation into the film. If Condon and his screenwriters intentionally chose the oafish LeFou to be a tribute to Ashman’s legacy, they made a decision that seems tasteless if not outright disrespectful.

“Beauty and the Beast” has its bright spots, of course, but none are sufficient to outweigh its conspicuous shortcomings. Emma Watson, who is not known for her singing, gave an unexpectedly adequate vocal performance, and a few of the ensemble musical numbers are enjoyable enough, though they obviously fall far short of those in the original. All things considered, “Beauty and the Beast” seems to be a wholly unnecessary remake, a mistake that did not need to be made.