20 Best Films Of 2017 (So Far)
15. Beauty And The Beast
There are some who will tell you that there was no need to remake Beauty And The Beast as a live action release, but those people are joyless husks pretending to be film fans and their opinions don't count. Sure, it would have been a different matter if the remake had proved to be terrible, but the reality is that it was just as well put together as Jon Favreau's The Jungle Book, and feels like it was lovingly crafted by actual fans of the original.
There are changes to the source material, but they're all entirely forgivable, with new characters adding a different dynamic and a conscious attempt to address some of the plot-holes created by the cartoon.
Emma Watson makes an endearing lead, Dan Stevens is great a Beast (though those pre-effects shots are terribly distracting), and the wider cast is as delightful as you'd expect. If the only agenda here was to recapture the magic of the classic original, that was achieved in spades.