10 Changes That Make Beauty And The Beast Worse Than The Original
3. 129 Minutes Feels Like Days
The original 1991 film was a snappy 84 minutes and the plot zipped along at high speed with the songs coming thick and fast. In contrast, the 2017 live action version is a bloated 129 minutes with plenty of unnecessary scenes added in like so much filler.
Half of the problem is that the film over-explains itself and doesn't leave a single thing to the audience's imagination. We have to see the enchantress cast the curse and then reverse it at the end.
There's arbitrary backstory about Belle's father Maurice enduring the pain of leaving his wife to die of plague in Paris. Elsewhere Gaston is revered as a soldier but it's hard to decipher whether he's proud, scarred or both when it comes to his military career. Later Gaston has a petty squabble with Maurice about marrying Belle when in the original animation he skulks around Belle's house once Maurice is out of town like true romantics do...
Other weird changes? Maurice steals a rose from the Beast's castle. Maurice makes a music box that serves no real purpose. The Beast sings about the pain of letting Belle go. It drags on and on!