Beauty and the Beast

Bill Condon's 2017 live-action Beauty and the Beast retells Disney's 1991 animated classic. Belle (Emma Watson), a bookish young woman in a provincial French village, longs for more than the life expected of her. When her inventor father Maurice (Kevin Kline) is imprisoned in a looming castle, she takes his place and meets its master, the Beast (Dan Stevens), and his enchanted household staff, who have been turned into talking objects.

Meanwhile the village's vain war hero Gaston (Luke Evans) and his devoted sidekick LeFou (Josh Gad) pursue Belle, and Gaston will not accept refusal. The film keeps the beloved songs and adds new material, including extra backstory for Belle and the Beast and new songs.

Critics generally praised its cast, songs and visual detail. They were more divided on the CGI character designs and on how closely it follows the original.

The film's central message is that love looks past appearance to character, and that real transformation comes from being seen and understood. Belle values minds, books and freedom, and she falls for the man inside the Beast. The film is careful to show this: she learns of the curse before her feelings develop, and she keeps asserting her independence. This answers the common charges of Stockholm syndrome or bestiality. The villain Gaston is handsome but hollow, so the film also warns against confusing outward beauty with worth and against mob mentality driven by wounded pride.

Some viewers read the story as a Stockholm-syndrome romance, since Belle is held captive. Others, including some reviewers, argue the remake corrects this by having Belle learn of the curse early and keep asserting her freedom. The LeFou subplot is read either as welcome progress or as timid tokenism.

The film was released in March 2017 and became one of the most successful live-action Disney remakes, grossing about $1.26 billion worldwide. It helped cement Disney's strategy of remaking its animated classics as live action. It sparked controversy when Condon said LeFou would have an \"exclusively gay moment\". A theater in Henagar, Alabama refused to screen it, and Russia restricted viewing to those aged 16 and over. Many LGBTQ+ viewers felt the moment, a few seconds of LeFou dancing with another man, was too slight for what had been billed as a landmark.

Critics gave it generally positive reviews, and Rotten Tomatoes lists it at about 71%. Praise went to the cast, songs, score, costumes and production design. Criticism concentrated on the CGI designs of the Beast and the objects, on characters being watered down from the 1991 film, and on added backstory that some felt did not advance the plot. The LeFou controversy was also divisive. The overall verdict is a lavish, faithful, if familiar, nostalgic spectacle.