Video review: "Beauty and the Beast"

When “Beauty and the Beast” came out in March, I asked why a live-action remake of one of the best animated films of all time even needed to exist. Since then, the movie has provided its own reasons: 1.23 billion of them, to be exact. That’s the film’s global box office take in dollars as of this writing.

It’s a well-crafted film, bright and engaging and full of vivid characters. No doubt there is a new generation of moviegoers who experienced this timeless tale for the first time, since the 1991 animated version now falls into “classic film” category, as strange as it may seem.

I can only hope they experienced as much joy and thrills I had when I first saw Belle and the Beast dance together for the first time.

But I bet not.

Let’s start with the fact that Emma Watson has many wonderful qualities, but a singer she is not. Her frail little voice just can’t carry big Broadway-style show tunes (by lyricist Howard Ashman and composer Alan Menken). Her Belle doesn’t have that sense of hesitation we admired, existing more as a latter-day proto-feminist.

I also didn’t care for the look of the Beast (Dan Stevens), who can’t help looking like a dude in a fur suit. It seemed like the filmmakers were trying to turn him more into a classic romantic figure than a tragic, magically cursed prince.

The story is well-known: inquisitive young girl comes to be the prisoner of the Beast, who is trapped in his castle along with his entire staff of servants by a fell hex placed on him a decade earlier. If he doesn’t find someone to love him soon, the curse will remain forever.

Luke Evans plays the villain, martial hunter Gaston, who covets Belle for himself. Josh Bad is his right-hand henchman, LeFou, who does some pining of his own.

Rounding out the vocal cast are Emma Thompson, Ewan McGregor, Audra McDonald, Ian McKellen and Stanley Tucci. Kevin Kline plays Belle’s (live-action) father.

There are four brand-new songs in addition to all the originals from the animated movie, though only one, “Days in the Sun,” is memorable.

Billion-dollar payday or not, there’s just very little magic in seeing a virtual shot-by-shot remake of one of the most beloved films ever.

Bonus features are truly wondrous, though you’ll have to buy the Blu-ray version to get nearly all of them. The DVD contains only a music video.

There are about 10 minutes of deleted scenes, as well as an extended version of “Days in the Sun.” A sing-a-long version lets you jump straight to all the songs.

Perhaps the neatest feature is “Enchanted Table Read,” in which the cast carries out an elaborate table read of the film, including singing, dances and set pieces.

There is also a making-of documentary and several featurettes focusing on the people in front of and behind the cameras.

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Review: "Beauty and the Beast"

Time passes for us all, and for the movies. Since “Beauty and Beast” came out in 1991 and became regarded as one of the greatest animated films of all time, an entire generation has been born, grown up and started having babies of their own. Though it might make some of us feel old to say, it’s passing into cinematic antiquity.

I walked into the 2017 live-action remake with but a single word of question on my lips: “Why?” I left without grasping any kind of answer.

The new movie, starring Emma Watson and Dan Stevens, is almost a shot-by-shot remake of the animated film, with a few extra flourishes and minor changes. They reuse the Oscar-winning musical score by lyricist Howard Ashman and composer Alan Menken, with four new songs by Menken and Tim Rice that don’t measure up to the old stuff.

Most of the cast spends the movie in CGI form as enchanted clocks, teapots, harpsichords, wardrobes, candelabras, etc. Directed by Bill Condon (“Mr. Holmes”), it’s a beautiful, colorful film with energetic musical numbers, distinctive characters and an ageless love story.

And it has no reason for existing.

I’m not a purist on remakes and sequels. If you can make something that adds to the mythology of a film, or extends the characters and their individual arcs, then you’ll get no arguments from me. Disney has launched a number of live action remakes of its classic animated flicks, including “Cinderella” and “The Jungle Book,” and I’ve liked almost all of them.

But this one feels different… hollow, somehow. The tragic love story of the Beast (Stevens) and Belle (Watson) lacks the gut-churning emotional wrench of 1991. The best thing about the animated movie was its unexpected dramatic heft. That had the tone of “Romeo and Juliet.” This new one is the TV sitcom version.

It’s not helped by Watson’s singing voice, which is unequal to the task of carrying songs. That’s become a thing lately: casting non-singers as the leads in musicals. (See “Land, La La.”) Maybe it’s time to reconsider.

Stevens’ portrayal of the Beast using a mix of costume, makeup and CGI doesn’t exactly work, either. He looks like a smaller, softer, prettier version of the animated Beast. Even his leonine nose swoops down appealingly toward a modest snarl. I liked the cartoon Beast’s busted, crooked honker and every-which-way fangs. The new one looks like he got Jenny Craig and a plastic surgeon.

You know the story: village bookworm Belle stumbles into the castle of the Beast looking for her lost father, Maurice (Kevin Kline, changed from inventor to artist here). The master of the house and all his servants have been hexed with a terrible curse, which will become permanent if the magic rose loses its last petal before he finds true love. Belle agrees to become his prisoner in exchange for dad, and antagonism gives way to blooming romance.

The heavy is again Gaston (Luke Evans), the swaggering musclebound hunter/soldier who desires Belle for himself. Josh Gad, as the flunkie LeFou, adds notes of jaded longing for his longtime companion. Some people are upset about having a (more or less) openly homosexual character in a Disney movie, but I was more perturbed he falls into the weary cliché of gay man pining for an unavailable straight.

Ewan McGregor takes over the Lumiere role of rapscallion candelabra; Emma Thompson is Mrs. Potts, and does a reasonably good job warbling the title song; Ian McKellen is unctuous butler Cogsworth; Audra McDonald is the operatic wardrobe; Stanley Tucci is a new character as the wardrobe’s musical and marital accompanist.

Originally they were going to weave some of the songs from the stage musical version into the movie, but instead went with four new ones. Two are just short trifles, while the Beast’s “Evermore” is a bland Broadway hollerer. Though “Days in the Sun,” sung by Watson with help from the supporting characters, more adequately explores the dilemma of the servants caught up in their master’s curse.

I think the lesson is if you’re going to remake a beloved classic, you need to let it evolve. Take some risks, change it around and see how audiences react. They may not like it as much. But there’s no magic in mere repetition.

Video review: "Ricki and the Flash"

If there’s nothing more exhilarating in a movie theater than finding a wonderful film where you didn’t expect, then little is more depressing than walking out let down by a movie you had awaited with enthusiasm. Such was the case for me and “Ricki and the Flash.”

I think Meryl Streep is the finest actor working in film today, and operate under the general assumption that having her in the cast makes anything worth the price of admission. And while “Ricki” certainly isn’t a bad flick, it’s got too many obvious problems in its structure and execution to ever had a chance at being good.

Streep plays a woman who ran out on her family decades ago to pursue her rock ‘n’ roll dreams on the West Coast. She never made it big, but continues to entertain at night while working days as a checkout clerk. Then Ricki gets the call that her daughter, Julie (Mamie Gummer, Streep’s real-life kid), is in a bad way after a terrible breakup.

You can’t go home again, at least not without stirring up old heartbreak, as Ricki discovers in a by-the-numbers trip through resentment and buried longing. The screenplay by Diablo Cody takes a “kitchen sink” approach, lobbing in all sorts of distracting sub-characters and side plots.

The main dynamic between mother and daughter gets lost, and Julie actually disappears for most of the second half. Kevin Kline is poorly used as Ricki’s ex-husband, a diffident but decent fellow who’s moved on from a shattered love life but still feels some warmth toward her.

Throw in the gay son’s coming out, the other son’s wedding, Ricki’s scratchy romance with her lead guitarist (Rick Springfield) and a face-off with her children’s stepmother, and there’s just too many notes in this cacophonous arrangement. And director Jonathan Demme can’t find a consistent tone amidst the chaos.

Streep’s great as always, but “Ricki and the Flash” gets the primary chords wrong.

Video extras are middling. The DVD comes with a making-through documentary, and that’s it. The Blu-ray adds deleted scenes, a photo gallery and a featurette on Springfield’s reemergence as a rock icon and actor.

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Review: "Ricki and the Flash"

I could've done with less singing.

That may be seem a strange criticism for a movie about a rock star. (Well, a rock musician, anyway.) But that was my main takeaway from "Ricki and the Flash": it spends way too much time with Meryl Streep and her eponymous band doing covers of (mostly) classic rock songs.

We all know how it goes with musical montages: the band will start playing, the scene will build energy as the song rises, the high point is the chorus, and then movie cuts away to a series of images that let us know they kept playing, but they're not going to show all of it. Director Jonathan Demme and screenwriter Diablo Cody don't do this: we hear the whole song from beginning to end, just about every time.

The would be fine if the five, six minutes or whatever of song propelled the plot and advanced the characters. Or if it was just good to listen to. But the complete tunes seem more like an excuse to let Streep stroke her ego and play rock god. And, frankly, Ricki and the Flash sound like what they are: a third-string cover band. We know Streep can sing pop ballads and folk music from other movies, but here she's trying to do that husky-voiced rock voice, and it's just not her bag.

They're going for Bonnie Raitt, but it sounds like Meryl Streep after gargling Wild Turkey and thumb tacks.

Ricki bailed on her Indianapolis family a quarter-century ago or so to pursue her rock 'n' roll dreams in Los Angeles. She never made it but never left, spending days as a cashier at Total Foods while working the Salt Well bar as the house band for the aging clientele who want a little shake with their suds.

Then Ricki gets a call from her former husband, Pete (an ill-used Kevin Kline): their daughter Julie has just been dumped by her husband and is in an emotional spin. Pete's second wife, Maureen, is off dealing with her own family problems. Can Ricki (real name: Linda) come back and be a mother to her kids again?

Things play out much as you'd expect. The children -- they also have two sons -- are stupendously resentful of the parent who walked out on them so long ago. There's a lot of screaming and recrimination at first. But slowly, Ricki starts to ease her way back into their lives.

As usual, Streep is the best thing about whatever movie she's in. Her Ricki is frayed and strained, riddled with guilt but also justifiably proud of the fact that rolled the dice on her dreams. She sports a weird braided hairdo, omnipresent necklaces and makeup that looks like it was applied with a bricklayer's trowel. Everywhere she goes, people stop and stare.

Julie is played by Streep's real-life daughter, Mamie Gummer, and it's no small thing for a movie to feature people playing relatives who actually resemble each other. Their early scenes together crackle with energy. Julie has become despondent and suicidal, with a convincing rat's nest hairdo and lips curling with ready insults for her wayward mom.

Cody, who took Hollywood by storm with her script for "Juno" and then has been unable to follow up with anything approaching it, goes for the kitchen sink approach to story construction. Just Ricki coming home, healing the rift with her daughter and negotiating a dance around old resentments with her ex is enough. But then Cody throws in other entanglements: her son's pending marriage; her other son's coming out; her bandmate and bedmate (a soulful Rick Springfield) desiring something more concrete; the stepmom (Audra McDonald) returning just in time to lay down the law and ruin the party.

Characters and subplots dance in and out of the foreground, some staying too long and others exiting the stage too soon. The emotionally resonant reunion between mother and daughter gets sort of... misplaced. Julie literally disappears for most of the second half. Wasn't she the entire reason for Ricki's homecoming?

I admit I had been eagerly looking forward to this movie, and came away disappointed. It's not a bad flick by any stretch, and I'm of the opinion that anything with Streep is worth the price of admission. Ricki comes into clear focus, but everything around her stays fuzzy.

Review: "My Old Lady"

Kevin Kline is in fine, fine form in “My Old Lady,” a movie that is not about his character’s wife. In it he plays a middle-aged man with a squandered life who finds that the incredibly valuable Parisian apartment he has inherited comes with a catch: the 92-year-old woman who already lives there, and isn’t about to leave.

She’s played by Maggie Smith, no slouch herself.

It seems Mathias Gold’s estranged father purchased the lovely chateau-sized place from Mathilde Girard more than 40 years ago under a “viager” arrangement. This especially French concoction involves selling a home at a low price, often to an elderly person, with the agreement that the seller will continue to live there, indefinitely. The buyer only gets the place when the seller dies.

Mathias, a failed writer, has little to show for himself other than two divorces and the clothes on this back. He used his last penny to fly to Paris to arrange the sale of his the apartment, which his hated father left him (unaccompanied by any funds, which went to charity).

Looking at a payday of millions of euros, he’s none too pleased to find Mathilde living there. A retired British teacher with an elegant if snippy personality, Mathilde has the legal right to stay – and even charge Mathias rent while he’s there!

(I feel compelled to point out that though the characters are supposed to be decades apart in age, Kline and Smith are actually only divided by 12 years -- yet another example of sexist showbiz ageism. Though both thespians have been blessed with stubbornly unchanged looks. And Smith had already been in the old biddy business for quite some time: she played a centenarian in “Hook” 23 years ago!)

Thus begins a sly contest of wills, as these two cagey warriors battle to outlast each other. To pass the time Mathias sells off some furniture for pocket money, gets advice from a real estate agent (Dominique Pinon), lines up a potential buyer and begins to take an interest in Mathilde’s daughter Chloe (Kristin Scott Thomas), who also lives at the apartment and is more openly antagonistic than her mother.

Kline has always been one of the unlikeliest movie stars, a cards-down actor who always gives the sense of an internal complexity at work, only a peek of which he’s showing us at any given time. That’s especially true with the wily Mathias, who is presented as a loathsome opportunist, and yet is winningly charismatic and droll.

Writer/director Israel Horowitz, who adapted his own stage play, manages to craft a movie about a trio of characters, all of whom are deeply flawed in some way, and yet make the audience care deeply about them. Just when we might feel ready to judge them for some past action, new information comes along that makes those dark deeds, if not justifiable, then at least relatable.

Filled to the brim with smart, snappy dialogue and engaging characters, “My Old Lady” is one of those movies that keeps revealing new layers to itself. I certainly hope Kline’s turn, one of the best of his career, is remembered come Oscar nomination time.

Review: "The Last of Robin Hood"

More than 20 years ago Kevin Kline had a lovely performance in “Chaplin” as an aging movie star playing out his last hand as a wastrel playboy. He was so good as Douglas Fairbanks that when it came time to cast someone as Errol Flynn in his declining years for “The Last of Robin Hood,” Kline seemed an obvious choice.

He terrifically captures Flynn’s fizzy, rakish persona, which showed little difference between his on-screen swashbuckling and his off-screen adventures. (Flynn chronicled them himself in his posthumous autobiography, “My Wicked, Wicked Ways.”) He spent so much time carousing, drinking and drugging, seducing young girls, sailing on his yacht and otherwise dribbling out his days, it’s hard to believe he found time to make movies.

Done up with Flynn’s signature pencil mustache and cravat-and-evening-jacket outfit, tumbler of booze perpetually in hand, Kevin makes for a pretty spot-on physical impersonation, too.

(Normally I would feel compelled to point out that, at nearly age 67, Kline is rather too old to play Flynn, who died at 50. But Flynn’s hard-charging lifestyle aged him prematurely. And Kline, in several shirtless outings, flaunts a surprisingly athletic figure that helps the age concerns vanish.)

“Robin Hood” takes its title from perhaps Flynn’s most famous role, but focuses on the last two years of life when his star had fallen and he worked only itinerantly. He notices a young starlet, Beverly Aadland (Dakota Fanning), and in the classic Hollywood seduction method, sends a flunky to fetch her.

Their initial coupling is, to say the least, brief. Not surprising, considering this is a man who was charged with statutory rape in 1942 (and acquitted) and bedded so many ladies they coined the phrase, “In like Flynn.”

But a couple of factors work to sustain the relationship beyond a one-night stand. First is Flynn’s profound self-awareness, including the thought that that his ability to attract women is rapidly waning, and he’d rather not be left alone at the end of the party. The other is a certain Machiavellian aspect to Beverly: the sense that she’s using him as much as he is her.

This is honed and encouraged by her mother, Florence (Susan Sarandon), a showbiz mom who pushes her daughter to sing, dance and act her way to easy street. In Beverly’s case, the talent is not an even match with the ambition, so when Flynn turns up offering to “help” the girl’s career, Florence offers a few perfunctory objections before signing on.

Of course, there’s more revelry than actual opportunity. At one point Errol and Beverly disappear for five months to Africa, and in the finished film she only has one line of dialogue. But the pair seem to be a genuinely affectionate couple, with Florence often tagging along as chaperone.

At some point I should mention that Beverly is only 15 when she and Flynn start dating, and just 17 when he dies. This comes as a shock to him when he finally learns it, though not so much to quit the affair. Obviously, this information puts the entire dynamic of the relationship in a different, disturbing light.

Writing/direction duo Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland tell the story from a flashback perspective, with Florence narrating her side of events to a book author after Flynn has passed and a media firestorm erupts over his teenage damsel. Sarandon paints a picture of a profoundly deluded woman, who gave up her own dreams of stardom to push her kid to unwholesome lengths.

If the movie has a weakness, it’s that Flynn and Florence are vivid, engaging characters and Beverly remains something of a cypher. Fanning does what she can with the material, but the script doesn’t lend her a lot of opportunities to reveal the character’s interior architecture.

But “The Last of Robin Hood” is worthwhile, if for no other reason to see Kline scamp and strut as the iconic bad boy. “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend,” goes the classic Hollywood line -- one that could’ve been written about Errol Flynn.

Reeling Backward: "Silverado" (1985)

Emmett: "Blind Pete always said you'd hang. I guess tomorrow at dawn, he'll be proved right."
Sheriff Langston: "10 a.m."
Emmett: "Oh, right. I always thought they did it at dawn."

"Silverado" is a film that I've never quite been able to peg. All I know is that I've always adored it.

Made in the dark days of the Western between "The Wild Bunch" and "Unforgiven," it would appear at first glance to be an homage to the genre. Made by and starring Baby Boomers, it reads like a bunch of kids playing dress-up and mimicking the shootin' and ridin' of John Wayne and other cowboys they themselves watched on film and TV.

The plot is essentially a pastiche of every great Western trope -- revenge duel, cattlemen vs. farmers, a corrupt lawman, a hero in a black hat, a pretty woman who tempts a wandering soul into settling down, a young boy who idolizes the gunman who's known only a life of tragedy. There's even a modernist angle with a proud African-American standing up to a bunch of racist cowpokes threatening his family.

(About the only thing it's missing is a subplot involving Indians, of which there's not a one.)

And yet, director Lawrence Kasdan, who co-wrote the script with his brother Mark, often lets the proceedings wander into the territory of parody. The part I've never figured out is whether it's intentional or not.

Consider the quote above. That's just this side of pure comedy. When the cowpoke Emmett delivers the last line, that's not the stern pronouncement of a well-worn cowhand who's ridden everywhere and seen it all. It's the postmodernist quip of a guy in 1985 making a pun out of every movie he's seen that included a hanging.

(For that matter, who the hell is Blind Pete? He's referenced twice in the movie without any other information being provided. Presumably he's another familiar Western type, the crazy/smart old codger. This way Kasdan gets to summon his image without having to bother with actually creating and casting a character.)

Emmett is played by Scott Glenn, one of my all-time favorite "That Guy" movie actors. With his lean, creased face, rangy physique, squinty eyes and gruff voice, he was born looking like he wandered out of a Hollywood Western poster. Emmett has just finished doing five years in prison for manslaughter after killing the patriarch of the McKendrick clain, the local cattle barons. Taciturn and tough, Emmett comes closest of the film's four cowboys to the classic Western hero archetype.

Technically Emmett is the main character, though Glenn receives second billing to Kevin Kline. He plays Paden, a funny/sad gambler/gunman with a wise disposition and fatalistic bent. When we first meet him he's been robbed of everything he owns and left in his longjohns to die in the desert. After being rescued by Emmett, he proceeds to recover his beloved horse, hat and gun in subsequent shoot-outs with his robbers. Paden is a cynic who often takes on lost causes, and a romantic whose passions drift like a tumbleweed, until they stop in the most unexpected places.

Like Kasdan himself, Kline was just coming off the huge success of "The Big Chill." Jeff Goldblum was also in both movies, relishing a small part as turncoat card-dealer Slick. Technically, Kevin Costner was too, though as is well known in Hollywood lore, Costner's role as the dead friend being grieved was left on the "Chill"-y cutting room floor.

Perhaps that's why the role of Jake, Emmett's callow hot-head of a brother, is so deliberately showy -- Kasdan, perhaps sad over depriving an actor of his breakout role, decided to provide him another. All Jake really does is kiss girls, shoot bad guys with his fancy two-gun rig, and smile at the camera. Soon Costner was landing leads in big productions like "The Untouchables" and "No Way Out," and he was off to the races.

Danny Glover plays expert rifleman Mal, just returned from working in the slaughterhouses of Chicago, only to find his family plot overrun with McKendrick cattle, his mother dead of illness, his father soon murdered, and his sister run off to Silverado to become a whore. He gets a nice introductory scene where he's refused a drink of whiskey in a saloon because of his skin, and takes down three fat-faced white guys who try to enforce the unwritten rule.

He's run out of town by Sheriff Langston, a stiff Brit played for comic relief by John Cleese, who was also planning to hang Jake on trumped-up charges. When the boys break out of town, Cleese delivers the funniest line in the movie: After chasing them into a trap where they're pinned down by Mal's marksmanship, Langston decides to abruptly give up the chase. "Today my jurisdiction ends here," he announces, turning his horse around.

Cleese also got very high billing in the credits unwarranted by his limited screen time, though even he's beaten out by Rosanna Arquette. Billed third, she has maybe four total minutes in the movie, and only two dialogue scenes totaling 119 words. (Yes, I counted.) The character exists solely as a sweet-faced lure to the dusty rawhides who dream of a better, settled life.

If Arquette provides an unsatisfactory female presence, then Linda Hunt makes up any difference. Playing Stella, the pint-sized manager of The Midnight Star, the high-end saloon that bears her nickname, she has a small but solid role as a symbol of decency and workaday toughness. Accustomed to serving on the fringes of other people's indulgences, she's surprised to find herself the object of unexpected affections.

Hunt, having recently won an Oscar -- for playing a character of the opposite gender, still the only performer ever to do so -- shows what you can do with a tiny, tidy role that's well-written and splendidly played.

The rest of the cast is filled out by Brian Dennehy as Cobb, the smiling, winking bandit-turned-sheriff who's firmly in the McKendrick pocket; Jeff Fahey as the local crazy-eyed killer; Lynn Whitfield as Mal's sister Rae; Thomas Wilson Brown as Augie, Emmett and Jake's wide-eyed nephew; the inimitable James Gammon as a gravel-voiced outlaw leader; and Thomas Wilson Brown, a generic and throwaway villain as McKendrick.

Everything in "Silverado" is filmed in a precious way as if trying to recreate the best moments of classic Westerns. The movie opens with a shot from inside a tiny cabin out the doorway into the grand, valley-filled landscape beyond, a fairly deliberate borrowing from "The Searchers." The booming musical score by Bruce Broughton, replete with trumpets and other brassy brass, earned an Oscar nomination, as did the sound crew.

(It was Broughton's song, "Alone Yet Not Alone," that got an Oscar nomination for Best Song last year but got disqualified under some arcane rules of the Academy. Broughton sent out a few dozen emails to his friends in the movie biz asking them to give it a listen, which the Academy disallowed as "campaigning." Yet the annual suck-up-fest perpetrated for whatever Weinstein movie on tap trundles on.)

So is "Silverado" an homage, a parody or something else entirely? After seeing it again for perhaps the dozenth time, I confess I still haven't decided. My gut tells me it's a serious paean, a recreation of the cowboys-and-Indians games (minus the Indians) Kasdan & Co. grew up playing.

But then I watch again scenes like Emmett practicing his gunplay, and I wonder still. There's one part where he's aiming at a cactus plant with his rifle from maybe 50 yards away. Not only does he hit the plant, he shoots off individual spines, one at a time. This is so absurdly ridiculous that I can't believe the filmmakers taking it seriously, or imagining anyone in the audience doing so, either. It's stuff like this that makes me think the movie has just gone momentarily goofy.

Sometimes I laugh at "Silverado," and sometimes I just sit back and admire its fanboy, fetishistic take on the Western. What I do know is, whenever I watch this film, I'm grinning as wide as the dusty plains.