‘Beauty and the Beast’

Movies
Opens March 14

‘Beauty and the Beast’

Meredith Woerner

Director: Bill Condon
Cast: Emma Watson, Ewan McGregor, Dan Stevens, Ian McKellen, Luke Evans, Josh Gad

Let’s be real. A live-action “Beauty and the Beast” with full-on musical soliloquies is a bold idea. But the thought of Emma Watson as Belle running up a hill belting out, “I want adventure in the great wild somewhere,” hits right in that sweet nostalgia spot, hard.

There is absolutely no way a live-action film about singing household objects and a young woman falling in love with what appears to be the human form of Black Phillip from “The Witch” should work, and yet we’re curious. Deadly curious.

The chances of finding one member of this office sitting front row full-on cry-singing through “Bonjour” one minute and then uncomfortably squinting at Dan Stevens’ interpretation of the Beast is very high. Why? Because the cast reads like it came straight out of the Internet’s dream journal.

Watson and Stevens play the leads while Ewan McGregor was cast as the candlestick, Lumiere; Ian McKellen is the clock, Cogsworth; and Emma Thompson is the teakettle, Mrs. Potts. Early standouts Luke Evans as the egomaniacal villain Gaston and his lackey Le Fou, played by Josh Gad, already have been creating plenty of buzz after the two started singing from their Instagram accounts.

It feels like Disney has been ramping up to this feature film for years, first with the song-free live adaptation of “Cinderella” in 2015 followed by Jon Favreau’s “Jungle Book,” which trotted out a few familiar tunes from the animated classic. But this “Beauty and the Beast” adaptation feels less like another artist’s interpretation and more like an homage to the past.

There are a lot of emotional chips riding on this flick. Nail it, and the fans will love you forever. Fail, and they’ll accuse you of destroying their childhood, yet again.