Plot: Beauty is the daughter of an elderly man who is having financial difficulties after his ships were wrecked. When her father finds out that some of his ships survived, he leaves to receive his shipment, but not before Beauty asks for him to bring back a rose for her. On his way back, he's caught in a storm and finds a castle where there is food laid out for him inside. But before he leaves the next day, he picks up a rose for Beauty, only for an angered Beast to threaten to kill him. But when The Beast finds out about Beauty, he makes a bargain to have her take her father's place. So Beauty is left to live in The Beasts castle, as The Beast intends to use this oppertunity to make her his wife.
Now before I get started on bashing this movie, I do want to say that as bad as it is, I give Good Times Entertainment credit for their general approach in telling the story. They basically decided to tell it almost exactly as it is told in the traditional fairy tale, as opposed to completely throwing whatever they wanted from beginning to end. They even came up with little changes to give their own different spin, such as having an evil fairy trying to stop Beauty from falling in love with The Beast, which is an idea that I personally really like. So for all it's problems that I am going to talk about, I admire how they were going approach the story for their cash in from Disney's release of Beauty and the Beast. In fact, I think with more thought and effort to it, this possibly could've become a decent flick. Now with all that said however, the execution of telling the story is pretty darn laughable. For one thing, the animation is poor. It's one of the kind of animated films where there often is more lip movement than body movement with the characters. And the faces of some of the characters are also very poor. In fact ironically, when it comes to looks, Beauty is, not all that good looking. She was actually pretty dull and almost completely expressionless. Frankly, as someone who loves Belle as a character, I am a little insulted at how this is their cheap cash in version of her. I realize that I just stated the obvious reason why it's bad, but...just...really? This is the best they can do? Sometimes, she could be sort of good looking, but other times she looks a little more like a guy if anything else. There's also some parts of the movie where they actually try to give her a genuine emotion to something happening, but the result comes off as pretty comical. For example, when Beauty finds out about the bargain her father makes with The Beast, naturally she's really shocked about it. But how that's delivered with the animation and even the voice acting is her appearing more like it's a happy reveal, as if a guy proposed to her or something. I know I'm not giving that moment justice with that kind of description, but trust me, it's really comically stupid. The design for The Beast is a stupid too, but at the same time (and I'm saying this out of comparing this movie with the next one), he still looks beastly enough to fit the story. The characters themselves are hardly fleshed out. While Beauty somewhat comes off as kind and caring, some of her actions don't make a whole lot of sense. Especially with her relationship with The Beast. She seemed to became romantically interested in The Beast way too quickly. It looked like she was secretly fawning over him almost as soon as he said that he hoped that she would be his wife someday. The Beast wasn't very fleshed out either, but at the same time, we still see both the monster and the caring being in him. (Again, comparing to the next movie) Beauty's sisters where obvious knock offs of Cinderella's sisters, though I guess that sort of works since apparently they technically were villains in the original tale. Though I'm saying that from reading the plot summary on Wikipedia, so don't completely quote me on that. The two characters that are the most entertaining in the whole movie are The Beast's servant, Clara, and Beauty's father. Both of these characters are so comically bad, that my siblings and I believe that the voice actors possibly knew that this whole project was crap and just decided to have fun with it. Finally, there's a big part in the plot during the third act that has to do with Beauty briefly visiting her family. This is spoiler territory, but with this kind of film, screw it. Anyway, when Beauty asks for a week to be with her family, The Beast allows her to go. But she can't stay any longer than that, otherwise he will die... of loneliness. You read that right. And honestly, I won't bother to say anything else about that, because the way to feel about that should be self explanatory.
And that's my review for GoodTimes Entertainment's Beauty and the Beast. The decision to follow closer to the original story as opposed to Disney's film is very admirable in my opinion. But the execution is met with poor animation, poorly developed characters, and a ridiculous set up for the third act. I know I am hardly giving any justice to the comedy of how bad this film is, but trust me, this movie is arguably one of those movies that is so bad that it's good. If you want to see Phelous' review for the movie, you can find it online or on his website, Phelous.com. And if you enjoy that enough and want to spend less than an hour of your time to watch and make fun of a bad movie, you can find this film on GoodTimes Entertainment's YouTube account.
Rating: 20%
"The decision to follow closer to the original story as opposed to Disney's film is very admirable in my opinion."
ReplyDeleteIffy. As someone who can appreciate keeping things in the spirit of the original, even if you go beyond shifting values (The original BatB being from a time when women were basically there to support the men in their lives and even being guilty of the stockholm syndrome that Disney gets flak for.*).
Take Phelous' Bevanfield and Good Times Aladdin review which is centered on adaptations more in line with the original Aladdin:
1. Having a less powerful Genie means less fanfare/excitement when the Lamp Genie appears.
2. The evil vizier being a separate character from the evil sorcerer means having to focus some time to make both characters entertaining if not compelling. So yeah if the original has some redundancy, better to trim or replace what is less appealing/
3. Demonstrated with the Good Times Aladdin. Now part of the problem is them merging the sorcerer with his brother when Aladdin reclaims the lamp VS killing the sorcerer and his brother seeking revenge. What really makes the scene jarring is that even if Aladdin wasn't going to kill well as Phelous puts it, Jafart:-D, why not wish him to be restrained?
Yeah trimming down unlimited wishes helps to make Aladdin a litter smarter in that he can't just wish his problems gone entirely. Especially when he promised to free the Genie entirely.
*It can be argued in fact that the reason why Disney's BatB gets accused of such is because when you give a less detailed synopsis, it does feel more like the original tale where Belle/Beauty falls in love with her captor whereas Dsney's Beast had to really turn himself around and even just to win her friendship, plus Belle being more disobedient.
Compare that to Beauty instantly friending the Beast and willing to have dinner in his presence whereas Belle told him to screw off and had dinner behind his back.