Chris At The Pictures

Emma Watson and Dan Stevens lead an all-star cast in this live-action remake of Disney’s 1991 animated classic. A smart and impetuous young woman named Belle (Watson) takes her father’s place in the abandoned castle of a hideous beast (Stevens), once a handsome prince punished for his selfishness. Trapped within the confines of the crumbling ruin, Belle befriends the transfigured house staff, slowly coming to discover there’s more to her monstrous captor than meets the eye. Meanwhile the caddish, swashbuckling Gaston (Luke Evans, firing magnificently on all cylinders), along with his infatuated sidekick, LeFou (Josh Gad), schemes to kill the beast and make Belle his wife.

Watson is a stunning Belle. That’s about all I can muster, really. I'd like to think my critical faculties extend beyond inserting several heart-eye emojis, but when Watson first appears it’s as if everything else (crisp faux-period detail, glittering landscapes, even Kevin Kline as Belle’s tender father) leap away at warp factor 9. Watson’s well-read inventor is a tad more outspoken and empowered than previous iterations of the story, and no less in control of the frame, the music, or the romance (and, to the huge relief of Potter fans, her eyebrows).

The photorealistic renderings of our favourite characters are intricately designed, but come off more than a little creepy (Madame Garderobe and her void-like maw, especially…yikes!), even when given such joyous sparkle by Hollywood’s finest: Ewan McGregor as Lumière, the talking candlestick, Ian McKellen as the finest incarnation of Cogsworth, the grumpy clock, and Emma Thompson, who gives reassuring life to Mrs. Potts, the cockney teapot.

It seems odd that such an otherwise tangible and lavishly designed yarn should have frayed digital edges: the Beast in particular feels very much an artificial insertion. Dan Stevens has an astonishing set of pipes on him, but the grumbling voice distortion and lack of physical heft somewhat squash his natural broiling charm. Still, he delivers the same heavy-pawed comedy-catharsis combo we expect; certainly enough to forgive any less-than special effects.

CGI is also used so extensively during the many musical numbers (‘Be Our Guest’ is the biggest offence) to compensate for the colour and flair of the original you wonder why they didn’t remake it into a 3D animation, rather than live action. Likewise, the grand ballroom sequence is a little flat-footed. Lacking the fluid, ground-breaking elements of its animated counterpart and opting instead for a whirling digital lightshow, director Bill Condon’s desire to enthral youngsters of a new generation could mean anti-climax for long-time fans.

Maybe this is a sign that the ‘tale as old as time’ has finally been drained of all invention? Perhaps, but those simply after a good time at the movies won’t be deterred by such a sweet, funny and soulful retelling. The songs, story and characters are pretty much invincible at this point, and to see them all brought to life again by some of cinema’s brightest stars is undeniable fun. Like the recent revivals of Cinderella and The Jungle Book, it shines with the high-tech glimmer of modern filmmaking and attempts to develop some new material: nothing much is lost, but there’s really nothing there that wasn’t there before. 

I’m not one of those people who grew up with Trainspotting. Heck, when it was first released I was barely older than the baby crawling around Mother Superior’s skag den. It does, however, hold a very special place in my heart. In the brief period between my GCSEs ending and the summer holidays beginning, I had a lot of free time and – not being a particularly sociable type – started to watch my way through the family DVD shelves. Obviously, I was a few years too young to be watching most of them but, if anything, that big red 18 certificate (and my love for the Star Wars prequels) had me keenly reaching for this Ewan McGregor film covered in laudatory quotes.

Films weren’t the same after that. Trainspotting was scummy, outrageously rude and utterly frank when it came to drugs, sex and growing up…and I’d never seen anything like it. So it’s fair to say that I had a different set of expectations for a sequel than those returning after two decades of appreciation, and I think this disconnect explains why T2 Trainspotting didn’t completely gel for me in the way it did for my parents and clearly thousands of others.

One thing it does get properly right is the characters. Surprisingly, they’re all still alive. Unsurprisingly, they remain various flavours of selfish, pitiful and psychotic. Sick Boy (Johnny Lee Miller) runs a pub but has a share in blackmail, cannabis and coke addiction on the side. Spud (Ewen Bremner) curls up every night in a hollow flat, miles away from his partner and son, his final smile from the previous film betrayed by an immediate return to heroin. Meanwhile, Begbie (Robert Carlyle) has made his escape from prison and plots his revenge against Renton (McGregor), who’s returned to his old haunts after twenty years in Amsterdam.

McGregor gets top billing, as expected, but his role is arguably secondary this time around. Having spent so long outside of his former friends’ world, Renton is now a sightseer. So the focus gradually shifts to the one sympathetic character left in the frame: Spud. Bremner further cements his place as one of his generation’s finest actors with a performance that retains every weird idiosyncrasy that made the character so endearing in the first place, but is tinged with Spud’s yearning to have his story heard above the macho posturing of his fellows. McGregor, Miller and Carlyle return to their roles, but Bremner advances his with an emotional maturity that Renton, Sick Boy and Begbie have only reached physically.

The entire film almost feels like a low-key realisation that maybe all the stuff you did when you were younger wasn’t such a good idea after all. The boisterous tone of the ’96 original is gone, replaced with a surprisingly frank bitterness and regret. Anthony Dod Mantle’s cinematography is as vibrant as ever (I still maintain he’s the only man on earth who could make a Transformers movie look good), but the canted angles and hedonistic zooms are few and far between. Even the soundtrack is supremely lacking in nostalgia until the last possible moment, choosing not to wallow in old hits or bankable Top 40 tracks (see Fifty Shades Darker or even, to some extent, Boyle’s own The Beach). There’s a thematic and technical handshake taking place, an agreement to turn it down from eleven.

And that’s what didn’t sit well with me. I’m not about to dismiss a film for including subtext, but what Boyle’s original worked best when it wasn’t really about anything. It was a sprawling, chaotic beast that provoked vomit and laughter in equal measure and marked a change in the landscape of British cinema. Maybe I’m too in love with that anarchic spirit, too enveloped in telling the older generations to stick it where the sun doesn’t shine, too busy choosing Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and everything else Renton despises to fully understand the existential bile of middle-aged regret.

However, I am also enough of a Danny Boyle fan to know when he’s doing it right (incidentally, you all need to watch Trance again), and there’s still heaps to enjoy here. The dialogue is excoriating, the emotional moments pack a punch and though the final moments are a shade predictable, they tick the box in a very comforting, homely way.