Beauty and the Beast (2017)

 Disney continues to have a stranglehold on a number of aspects of G-Rated entertainment.  They know how to milk a good story and get the most of it.  The movie that mother saw as a child is familiar to my children.  So all but inevitable that a property as adored as 1991’s "Beauty and the Beast," the first animated film to not just compete in Oscar’s Best Picture category but also top the $100 million box-office mark, would receive a 21st-century makeover.   I thought that I would not like this real life version of the Disney animated film that took home lots of awards years ago, but I was wrong about this. The film is nominated in the realm of costume and design, which are both good categories for it.  This is a gloriously old-fashioned musical with dazzling beauty to behold (with enough Rococo gold decor to gild any 17th century French castle) and is anything but a beastly re-interpretation of a fairy tale as old as time. It can be framed as a more inclusive display of love in its various forms, which goes beyond the sweetly awkward courtship between brainy, brave and independent-minded bookworm Belle (played by Emma Watson of Harry Potter films) and the cursed prince in the ill-tempered guise of a ram-horned bison-faced creature (Dan Stevens of “Downton Abbey,” whose eyes show him to be a man worthy of falling for).  In the end, I found it both charming and enjoyable.