Beauty and the Beast 4K 2017 Ultra HD 2160p

Favorite fairy tale comes to life and returns to the screens again. The mighty witch conjures the prince and his castle for his rudeness and turns the prince into a Beast. Only the sincere love of the girl who managed to discern the true beauty in the depths of his heart can remove the spell and return everything to their places. This time, world-famous movie stars such as Emma Watson (“Harry Potter”), Luke Evans (“The Hobbit. The Battle of the Five Armies”), Evan McGregor (“Star Wars”) and Ian McKellan (“The Lord of the Rings” will play and voice their favorite heroes. ").

The feature film directed by Bill Condon (The Twilight Saga. Breaking Dawn I-II) is a remake of Disney's thirtieth animated film based on the eponymous fairy tale by Jeanne-Marie Leprens de Beaumont after more than a 25-year break. Walt Disney Animation Studios headed for remakes of its animated films, and the film Beauty and the Beast is a logical continuation.

Beauty and the Beast 4K Review
The powerful sorceress curses a swaggering and heartless French prince. She turns a young man into a monster, and his servants into utensils. She also gives the prince a magic rose and announces that if the guy does not find the one he falls in love with and who reciprocates, until the last pink petal falls, then the curse will become eternal. Years pass, and once an inventor from a neighboring town wanders into the castle. When he picks a rose from the castle garden to give his daughter Belle, the Beast imprisoned the man. A brave girl (Emma Watson) proposes to replace her father in custody, and the monsters' servants decide that this is their only chance to remove the spell. So they unobtrusively push the beauty and the Beast to spend as much time as possible together.

The Walt Disney studio in recent years has released a number of game tapes based on classic Disney cartoons. No one ever hid that this was primarily an attempt to earn on the audience’s nostalgia and love for excellent paintings, but each time the project had an additional artistic justification. So, “Maleficent” told the story of Sleeping Beauty from the point of view of the villain, “Cinderella” narrated about the title heroine, and not about her mouse friends, and “The Jungle Book” was closer to the pathos of Kipling’s book than the too good-natured famous cartoon.

The Beauty and the Beast, however, has no artistic justification. The brilliant cartoon of 1991 is not out of date at all, and the tape of the screenwriter of Chicago and the director of Dream Girls Bill Condon does not even try to fundamentally change something in his story. Many scenes were transferred from one format to another almost frame by frame, and the new film is also a tragicomic musical with an action in France of the Baroque era.

At first glance, this is not the worst proposal that a modern viewer can make. If you steal, then the masters, and an almost exact copy of the masterpiece is better than the mediocre original canvas. But, unfortunately, the updated Beauty and the Beast could not recreate most of the magic that still oozes from the screen when you watch the 1991 cartoon.

First, let’s say that Condon added to the original, since this is a much shorter conversation than listing the “fails” of the new picture. First of all, Beauty and the Beast became more politically correct, and a lot of dark-skinned people appeared on the screen, who were not too organic for the French backwater of the 17th century. Further, several new songs were squeezed into the plot, which were noticeably worse than previous hits and which added almost nothing to the picture. Finally, the tape told why Belle did not have a mother, and this made it possible to explain a little better why the beauty and the Beast feel sympathy for each other (both lost their mothers early).

There are other small additions in the picture, but they are completely optional. Even worse, they drag out the narrative. The gay line of the film advertised by the director was reduced to a couple of translucent hints, so our officials in vain assigned the picture a rating of “16+”. By the way, we note that it only means that children under the age of 16 should not be allowed into the cinema without parental support.

Now about the failures. Firstly, decorators went too far with the baroque decoration of the Monster’s castle. Yes, the 17th-century castle should look like a manor house of a post-Soviet official with a bad taste, but there are so many gildings, chandeliers, elaborate carvings and even more elaborate castings on the screen that this “rich beauty” does not delight but suppress. When Belle first appears in the castle and exclaims “How beautiful!”, You immediately lose respect for her, since only a girl without a sense of beauty can consider the castle decoration to be utterly vulgar. The 1991 animated film also had a lot of baroque, but there it didn’t put pressure on the eyes and did not draw the audience’s attention from the characters.

Secondly, if in the cartoon the magic utensils were infinitely charming and so masterfully animated that in each of the enchanted heroes one could recognize the person whose servant was before the visit of the sorceress, then in Condon’s tape the enchanted characters are just a moving and speaking atmosphere. In the cartoon, Mrs. Potts did not need to hear the voice to understand what kind of person she was. For Condon, Mrs. Potts is just a teapot with a face, and her “play” is based on the voiceover of the voice actress. Take any frame with utensils from the cartoon, and you will see a much more expressive animation than in the new picture. The only exception to the rule is the Lumiere candlestick, which Condon’s film simply turned into a gilded man with complete freedom of movement. But even such a Lumiere is less expressive and charming than the Lumiere from the cartoon.

And finally, thirdly, the creature created using computer graphics does not fit well with Emma Watson. When a film tries to convince viewers that the characters love each other, he must first convince the audience that the characters are together in the frame, that they are from the same reality. In the cartoon, this is not a problem, since both characters are drawn. In the new picture, it is clear that beauty and the Beast are a real girl and a computer monster, and Watson’s game and the skill of the artists do not convince that these characters coexist on the screen. And about whether they love each other, there can be no question. Which, as you know, is critical for a romantic fairy tale.

True, something Condon did succeed. An excellent Gaston came out of Luke Evans (an arrogant and narcissistic hunter who believes that Belle should marry him), and the music scene with Gaston's song is almost as good as in the cartoon. The phantasmagoric musical number also looks great in which the utensils arrange for Belle's dinner performance. In addition, Emma Watson smiles with a megawatt smile, and minor characters regularly make young viewers laugh. However, these individual successes cannot save the picture, because it, with all its pathos, brilliance and scope, fails in the main. Condon was not able to tell a truly convincing and sincere story. He achieved only one thing - he recalled what the skill and grandeur of the 1991 tape consisted of. Well, thanks for that.