Beauty and the Beast (Bill Condon, 2017)

 

Cast: Emma Watson, Dan Stevens, Luke Evans, Josh Gad, Kevin Kline, Hattie Morahan, Ewan McGregor, Ian McKellen, Emma Thompson, Stanley Tucci, Audra McDonald, Gugu Mbatha-Raw. Screenplay: Stephen Chbosky, based on a screenplay by Linda Woolverton. Cinematography: Tobias A. Schliessler. Production design: Sarah Greenwood. Film editing: Virginia Katz. Music: Alan Menken. 

As one who thinks the Disney corporation’s decision to remake its cartoon films as live action ones is wrong-headed, I was prepared to be dismissive of Beauty and the Beast. But after saying that I think Bill Condon’s film is overlong and its production design is visually cluttered, I admit that I was won over, mostly by the casting and the reprises of the original Alan Menken-Howard Ashman songs. (I think the newer songs, with lyrics by Tim Rice, are just okay, not really so catchy and memorable.) Truth be told, I will watch almost anything that features Dan Stevens, Kevin Kline, and/or Emma Thompson, even their voices. And it’s nice to hear that their singing voices, as well as that of Emma Watson, are up to the demands. I also think that the “live” version (if you can call anything with so much CGI and motion capture live) improves on the cartoon in some regards. The characters of Gaston and LeFou are way too “cartoony,” if you will, in the cel-animated version. Luke Evans and Josh Gad do a good job of making them both funny and credible, and I love the hints of LeFou’s gayness that the new  version slips in – the film didn’t even need the fleeting glimpse of LeFou dancing with another man that caused so much stupid controversy.

A Fish Called Wanda (Charles Crichton, 1988)

Jamie Lee Curtis and Kevin Kline in A Fish Called Wanda

Cast: John Cleese, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Kline, Michael Palin, Maria Aitken, Tom Georgeson, Patricia Hayes, Geoffrey Palmer, Cynthia Cleese. Screenplay: John Cleese, Charles Crichton. Cinematography: Alan Hume. Production design: Roger Murray-Leach. Film editing: John Jympson. Music: John Du Prez. 

By all rights, A Fish Called Wanda shouldn't have worked: It's a blend of comic acting styles, from Monty Python to Hollywood to Broadway, under the direction of a septuagenarian best known for his work on that comparatively restrained classic of British postwar comedy, The Lavender Hill Mob (1951). It's vulgar and silly and hardly sensitive to social concerns -- it was denounced by disability rights advocates for the laughs derived from the Michael Palin character's stutter. And yet it remains one of the most successful screen comedies in history. It won Kevin Kline an Oscar for his performance as the dopey Übermensch Otto, and covered John Cleese, Palin, and Jamie Lee Curtis with glory -- especially Cleese, who not only wrote the screenplay (from a story he concocted with director Charles Crichton) but also reportedly did much of the directing for which Crichton got the Oscar nomination. The secret to its success is that it takes nothing seriously, especially the British and American national identity, but is so light-hearted in its offenses that they amuse rather than offend. It's full of little in-jokes, like calling the character played by Tom Georgeson "George Thomason," and naming Cleese's character Archie Leach without nodding to the fact that it was Cary Grant's real name. (That one may even be a double in-joke, since Grant himself ad-libbed a line about Archie Leach in Howard Hawks's 1941 screwball classic His Girl Friday.) Maybe it falls a little flat at the end, with the frantic business at Heathrow, but it would be hard to top what has gone before.