Beauty and the Beast

The visuals really are top notch, especially with Seydoux's red dress flowing across the snowy white forest. It's not as dark as one expects it to be, but it's fun nonetheless, especially if you have kids for company.

...the visuals are elaborate and that makes it watchable. However, there's a lot more that Gans could have done with this revered and traditional fairytale.

Apart from unnecessary side-stories and sub-plots, 'Beauty and the Beast' features traditional villains as well. The background score for the film is adequate, the performances by the lead pair decent, but not remarkable. Cassel, who's definitely older than the usual prince charming, looks glamorous and enchanting (even as a beast).

Beauty and the Beast looks good. Visually, at least. The special effects are not too bad. You will laugh a lot more if you decide not to take it seriously. At the end of it, this isn't a movie you should watch on your first date, but on the fifth date, when you can laugh at the screen with your better half.

Beauty and the Beast takes more time to establish the premise than an Ashutosh Gowarikar film takes to end. Set in a universe that is probably the lovechild of Katrina's Choc On advertisement and those insipid 3D animated Barbie movies, Beauty and the Beast is all silk, velvet and jewels with insignificant things like subplots and emotions thrown into the mix. A classic case of bad editing and worse dialogue, Beauty and the Beast certainly is not a children's film.

No doubt, one gets absorbed in the scenery. The jungle indeed sucks you in but everything is postcard fresh. A wilting red rose against a dark background, it seems somebody has imbued life into those children's picture books published in glossy paper. But when in the process the emotions also become too lustrous to be human, it hurts. The back story of the Beast and his sudden humanising seldom makes you grasp the armrest.