La Belle et la Bête: une 30e célébration

Would you rather watch the original Disney animated classic or would you rather watch portions of it, interrupted by commercials, live action sequences that are more about new choreography than the musical performances, interspersed with brief pieces about the creation and development of the orignal, perhaps accented with pop-up ads and scrolls on the bottom of the screen?

Some of the new performers are great talents. If only their talents were showcased better...and they were not lip synching!

In recent years we have been spoiled by some incredible live re-creations of musical classics that make this production suffer in comparison.

The parts that were live production were the best I've seen in a long while. The performances were amazing. This is why it was annoying when they would cut to the animated feature. I have mad love for the original but the back and forth just doesn't work for me. Either do a full live production or do the behind the scenes stuff and show the original movie. I feel the talent they had was wasted in the few brief performances they were given no matter how phenomenal those performances were (and they were fantastic!) Ps Rita Moreno was great with the behind the scenes into. I learned things I never knew and enjoyed that immensely!

I have enjoyed this, but I can understand why others may have not.

This is not a direct adaptation of the story as much as it is an homage to the original story and how that came to be. It is part documentary, part adaptation with mixed results.

I have found H. E. R. To be a charming Belle, Josh Groban was great as Beast (though underused), Joshua Henry was a fantastic Gaston and Rita Moreno was a delightful host. Shania Twain was not bad as Mrs. Potts, but lacked the theatricality that Angela Lansbury brought to the role. Martin short was Martin Short, meaning a joy and David Alan Grier was well cast Cogsworth.

I liked the sets they used and the costumes, though I have found the Beast to me a little more frightening than it might have been intended. The musical numbers were well done and well sang.

The different styles flow better in the beginning than they do in towards the end and I feel that for what they intended to do they showed too much of the original movie.

Is this bad? No.

Do you miss out on anything if you don't watch it? Depends on how much of a Beauty and the Beast fan you are.

I saw the original many years ago but don't remember much about it, so even the animated movie was like seeing this for the first time. I have also seen a version with Robert Carlyle as The Beast aka Rumplestiltskin and Emilie de Ravin as Belle, as one of the stories told in the ABC series "Once Upon a Time". The animated movie, of course, was fantastic. Narrator Rita Moreno, who did a fine job, introduced us to the animator responsible for Belle. He did a wonderful job, as did everyone involved in the excellent animation, and I have to stay the more realistic animation in movies now doesn't quite have that degree of charm. And the acting performances were wonderful. Of course Angela Lansbury's Mrs. Potts was great, and I had forgotten how good Paige O'Hara was.

So we were promised that live action sequences would be musical numbers. That wasn't quite true, as they tried to add some spoken word or dance sequences. We could see the cast walking past a portion of the live audience and that was nice. But after the animated film began, somehow I didn't see the first of the live action sequences as working. I was pleasantly surprised by H. E. R. Most of the time. I don't care for today's music and don't see talent when I see any of today's stars performing what passes for music. But H. E. R. Was fantastic in most of her numbers. Josh Groban was great too, at least as a singer, but his costume looked very strange and I can't imagine something that big being comfortable.

Martin Short was very good, especially on the amazing "Be Our Guest". Still, I couldn't stop comparing him to Jerry Orbach and sometimes felt something was missing. Most of the cast members with spoken lines did a very good job. Joshua Henry had a Shakespearean style that seemed overly pretentious for what is essentially a kids' production, but fine for something more sophisticated.

And I can't say enough about "Be Our Guest". Great singing, dancing, and objects appearing mysteriously from under the table as if by Disney magic.

The conventional dance numbers were great. Not sure how to feel about the wolves or whatever those were. But was the Pilobolus/Esther Williams routine really necessary? It just seemed strange, even if they were quite good.

Great costumes, except for the Beast. In my opinion, Groban should have performed offstage with someone else wearing that hideous thing. I mean hideous in a good way, if we can't see him in it. Great sets, too.

But not all was good. I still saw some of the live action sequences as pointless or not done as well as in the movie. And Shania Twain did not show how talented she really is. I don't know if she didn't have the voice for this sort of production, or whether the problem was her mike. When she sang "Beauty and the Beast", it was better. Not great, but the live audience seemed to like it. As I recall Twain didn't have lines, because of course only Lansbury could really do them right. Maybe Lansbury's vocals would have worked better.

And they couldn't avoid what passes for music in today's world. Actually, music of this type has been around a while, but that doesn't make it good. At one point heavy metal guitar was used, and I didn't care for it. And toward the end, why did H. E. R. Need to pick up a guitar and play that garbage? And some of the music toward the end sounded more like today's music than what was in the movie. Also, H. E. R. Couldn't avoid doing the extra syllables so many stars want to do today.

Mixing the animation and the live action may not have been a bad thing, and some of the live action was certainly good, but in other ways, live action just showed how much better the movie was.

I suppose it was worth seeing.

This is obviously mostly a vehicle to showcase how progressive ABC and Disney have become through the casting of H. E. R as Belle. H. E. R. delivers here, using the "R" in her acronym to reveal her beautiful eyes, shedding her edgy persona to temporarily become a Disney princess, and she is a great sport at it. Her exotic looks and exotic voice give Belle the texture we need in 2022. And as a bonus, H. E. R gives us a taste of her electric guitar skills at the end which is a nice surprise. At 25, she is only two letters away from EGOT, so I hope this live stage experience will open the doors for her to win a Tony next. Josh Groban performs as expected with his soaring voice, and the supporting cast, specifically Martin Short and Joshua Henry as Gaston, are awesome to watch. Overall, this is a good Christmas-time production, but the progressiveness stops on the surface, as deep down the "Beauty and the Beast" storyline is quite problematic. If you think about it, young girls should really be shielded from the dangerous messages lurking in this horror disguised as a classic Disney fairly tale. It's insidious.