A Life Sentence for a Rose

(a review of Beauty and the Beast (2017))

(spoilers for Beauty and the Beast, Beauty and the Beast (1991), Les Misérables (2012))

The latest in Disney’s growing list of live-action remakes of their own films, soon to include The Lion King and Mulan, Beauty and the Beast was… enjoyable. I’ll admit I was never really big on Beauty and the Beast. It’s fine, it just doesn’t do anything for me. So for this review mostly what I want to talk about is the criticism of Emma Watson’s singing rampant the moment this film premiered.

It seems that after Les Mis (2012) everyone became a fucking pitch expert, not even close to mildly critiquing every single goddamn flat note in an epic dramatic tale over two and a half hours long. Mostly I just hate when people don’t shut up, but this was especially bad because I didn’t find the complaints valid. Was every singer perfect? No, of course not. However, the slight off keys and flat notes and whatever else (I’m no music expert either) were made by actors, people being paid to experience and convey the emotions of their characters, and I find it all the more convincing when someone is singing of their struggles and crying and they miss a note, because the jarring difference brings you back to reality, where this person has become a prostitute to give their daughter a place to live, or is about to jump off a bridge because they’re an asshole.

And like I said, ever since then, and maybe also because of Pitch Perfect, everyone has to spend their time not shutting up about less than amazing singing. Emma Watson’s no opera singer, but to me Belle doesn’t have to be. To the keen eye it’s obvious when the song is live-sung and when it was prerecorded and added in post, but I’ll take that over shitty, on the set sound quality any day.

Mostly, just be quiet and enjoy everything else this gorgeous movie had to offer. Beautiful sets, well-needed inclusions to the story, including the repair of a couple plot holes from the 1991 film, and a satisfying final encounter with a villain much deeper and identifiable than previously portrayed. Why are the loudest voices always the ones trying to negate a good thing?