Beauty and the Beast (2017) Review

rating: ***

summary: Belle meets and falls in love with a beast.

review: These Disney live action remakes have been such hit-and-miss affairs, it always depends on how much the director really wants to revisit the material.  Beauty and the Beast is at once a worthwhile and listless effort in the series.

It's a constant struggle to breathe free from its confines, to be the lively kind of movie it wants to be and hopelessly devoted to play-acting the animated film it's based on.  If this had been made, say, fifteen years earlier, it would've fit right alongside the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.  At heart that's what it desperately wants to be.  Obviously having to be a musical puts a damper on such ambitions.  Bill Condon, who staged such a brilliant adaptation of Chicago, seems incapable of bridging the divide, staging a series of karaoke scenes instead, the songs lost to the soundtrack as they seem stubbornly unmoored from the screen material.  It begins to feel more like a tribute than anything.

One of the great signifiers of all this is Josh Gad, not because of his overblown gay element, but that he can't compete, in live action, with the voice work did as Olaf in Frozen.  Luke Evans, if he didn't have to sing, might be able to sell his part, too.  If it had been Russell Crowe (how interesting would that have been!), no critic would've thought twice to mention it (although Crowe almost certainly has more credentials than Evans on every score).  Evans is constantly being undercut by the material he chooses; in most other eras besides the ones he keeps popping up in, he'd have been a much bigger deal.

I'd be lying if I said I decided to watch for any other reason, really, than seeing Emma Watson in another big story and a role other than Hermione Granger, but she'd swallowed whole, too, by the intended pomp, and like Evans has no answer to the jukebox playing around her.  Dan Stevens plays well as the Beast, but as the Prince isn't given anything at all to work with, the very embodiment of how hollow all this is.  Ewan McGregor is barely recognizable either in voice or when we finally see him, a wasted opportunity.  Emma Thompson, let's face it, is no Angela Lansbury (although the kid voicing Chip is great, even if he doesn't get much to do, and once transformed back into a human is thoroughly undermined by the production).

The two shining lights are Kevin Kline reimagining the father and Ian McKellen as Cogsworth.  McKellen's career has been one constant string of frustration for anyone expecting any kind of consistent interest from the industry.  For every Gandalf or Magneto or Da Vinci Code, there's really almost total silence, which is a terrible shame, even when he makes it clear he outclasses everyone and thing around him in something like this.  

Stanley Tucci and Gugu Mbatha-Raw show up in undercooked supporting roles, more examples of what might have been.  I guess they can't all be David Lowery's masterful Pete's Dragon.  Well, I suppose, of course not...

Stardust (2007)

rating: ***

the story: A young man seeks to win the heart of a beautiful woman by seeking a falling star.

review: The idea of new cult movies seems to have fallen by the wayside in recent years, possibly because the MCU Avengers cycle has effectively made geek cinema mainstream in just about every iteration imaginable.  But Stardust is about as liable a contender as anything that's been released in the last fifteen years, in large part to a cast that has kept on giving, and a writer and a director whose legacies keep expanding.

The cast.  Oh, the cast!  You've got Charlie Cox as the lead character, Tristan.  Cox eventually found another spotlight in the Netflix series Daredevil.  Henry Cavill, in a much smaller role as Tristan's romantic rival (in Tristan's imagination, anyway, insofar as Tristan ever really had a chance), is perhaps the biggest easter egg in the movie, nearly unrecognizable as a fop with blond hair.  He would, of course, later take on the role of Superman.  Ian McKellen, at this point only a few years removed from his career-defining role as Gandalf in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy, is narrator.  Mark Strong, who would become a much better recognized supporting actor across a dizzying array of films, plays a would-be king.  Rupert Everett is in there, unrecognizable.  Ricky Gervais is easier to spot.  Claire Danes is the falling star.  Michelle Pfeiffer is the witch who wishes to be young again.  Sienna Miller is the girl Tristan thought he deserved (an oddly low key role, considering this was Miller's heyday).  Peter O'Toole, looking surprisingly frail, is in there.  And Robert De Niro.

Ah, De Niro.  This was the period where De Niro was finally coming to grips with his father.  Robert De Niro, the most famous tough guy of modern cinema, was the son of a gay man.  He'd directed The Good Shepherd (2006), a kind of allegorical film about his father, and then appeared in Stardust as a pirate who is secretly gay.  The gay aspects of the character are kind of parody, but the role is unexpected for De Niro, so seeing him this way is itself kind of reason enough to see Stardust.  I suspect part of the cult appeal for it comes from the LGBTQ community.

The writer of the book from which Stardust is derived is Neil Gaiman, who also wrote the epic Sandman comic book series.  Stardust was his first major screen adaptation.  The director is Matthew Vaughn, whose geeks credentials have expanded since. 

The results aren't as magical as all that.  You'd want a contender for The Princess Bride, but it just isn't there.  The presence of all those stars is just about enough compensation, though, with De Niro leading the pack.  McKellen sets the tone with his storybook narration.  Princess Bride is a storybook that spirals hilariously out of control.  Stardust remains storybook.  But it's still a good modern storybook.  Few enough elements compete with De Niro.  One is the collection of dead brothers.  The other is the goat who becomes a man (somewhat unconvincingly).  There's also Strong's undead duel with Tristan.  If there had been more of that, there'd be a better chance at truly comparing the results to Princess Bride.

Not that there has to be a comparison.  As its own thing, Stardust lightly sparkles.  And then, again, you see yourself drawn to all those stars...