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Beauty and the Beast

Lifeless live action clone

Regular readers will know that I’m not a huge fan of Disney’s criminal blandness and manipulative marketing. But I try to give the Mouse House its due when it gets it right, and I dug the 1991 animation. (And, for the record, I thought 2015’s reimagined Cinderella quite excellent.) But this reupholstered “live action” version (a misnomer, since it’s 95% frenetically edited computer animation surrounding a few blameless actors) left me cold. It’s 43 minutes longer and adds absolutely nothing, and I don’t know why it exists except to separate ‘tweeners from their allowances. Grumble grumble. (129 min)