Emma Watson As Belle Review

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As Disney aficionados know, a live-action version of Beauty and the Beast hits theaters on March 17 — nearly 26 years after the original animated film was released. spoke with the original voice actress behind Belle, Paige O'Hara, about the upcoming movie andhow it feels to have Emma Watson step into her shoes.

Perfect casting, O'Hara tells .If I was producing [the movie]I would have cast her as my number one choice, absolutely. I think she’s going to be amazing.

Behind The Scene's Beauty And The Beast's Interview With Emma Watson “belle” & Dan Stevens “the Beast

Belle isnot your average Disney princess. According to O'Hara, she is one of the only princesses meant to be in her 20s, as opposed to late teens. Plus her brown hair and bookish quality made Bellea departure from herregal blonde predecessors. This ties into Watson's personality well, according to O'Hara.

[Watson] isvery very smart, and she's got a real warmth about her too and a quirky odd sense of humor, O'Hara explains.I think she's gonna be great.

Watson and the team behind the remake have made some changes to Belle's original character and storyline. In this version, it's Belle who is the inventor — not her father, Maurice. And Watson believes that acommon critique of Belle's (that her relationship with the Beast is glorified Stockholm Syndrome) doesn't hold up when you look at her motivations and personality.

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To learn more about changes made to the original, read our full review.Beauty and the Beast arrives in theaters nationwide on March 17.'s Hermione Granger, nowadays Emma Watson is known for being a feminist ambassador - so it's no surprise that she's had a lot of input in modernising Belle's iconic yellow dress in Disney's live-action remake of

, the film's costume designer, Jacqueline Durran said: The dress was designed with easy, active moment in mind – Watson isn't wearing a corset underneath.

In Emma's reinterpretation, Belle is an active princess. She did not want a dress that was corseted or that would impede her in any way.

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She continued: [Belle's shoes] are heeled, 18th-century shoes, but they are something that Belle can run in and that she can go off and save her father in.

The scene that I wear that dress in, and I have that dance in, it really tells the story of Beast and Belle falling in love.

You know, we don't have a huge amount of time in the story to tell that story. The dance, for me, is really where the audience starts to see it happening and starts knowing that it is happening.

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This is total, blissful escapism. You are transported to another world. The dress, and the dancing, and the candlelight, and the music — it was really fun to work on every aspect of that.

The actress added: Jacqueline Durran is just such a wonderful person and costume designer. I think she did such a amazing job.

I was like, 'Well, there was never very much information or detail at the beginning of the story as to why Belle didn't fit in, other than she liked books. Also what is she doing with her time?'

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So, we created a backstory for her, which was that she had invented a kind of washing machine, so that, instead of doing laundry, she could sit and use that time to read instead. So, yeah, we made Belle an inventor.

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Last Night in Soho ending explained 50 best horror movies of all time Hellraiser four-movie 4K boxset gets price cut Kelly Macdonald's new movie lands UK release dateBeauty and the Beast is essentially a fairytale and a beloved animated film from 1991. Recreating it into a musical with darker elements became a talking point with film and fairytale pundits claiming that the cinematic version could not possibly hold a candle to the animated classic.

In Condon’s attempt, the tale is certainly old and known, but its telling is fresh and pleasing. Condon’s screenplay stays true to the 1991 hit. The prince (Stevens) in his narcissistic ways denies a poor, old lady shelter from the rain. The old lady is actually an enchantress in disguise and curses the prince into a Beast’s form, in which he is to stay forever if he doesn’t find true love before a certain time. Belle (Watson) is a beautiful girl, thought strange by the small-minded village folk for being a bookworm. She is wise enough to turn down repeated proposals from the snotty and vain Gaston (Evans). Belle’s indulgent father crosses paths with the Beast and finds himself a prisoner for a small transgression.

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This image released by Disney shows Emma Watson as Belle, right, and Kevin Kline as Maurice in a scene from 'Beauty and the Beast.' (Image: AP)

Belle exchanges her life for her father’s and gives herself up as a captive. Watson is dazzling as Belle, channelling sweet spunk or flashing steel effortlessly. Stevens, in Beast form for most part of the film, succeeds in bringing a forlorn, lost side of the Beast, which makes his melancholy more effective. The inanimate voice cast boasts big names such as Sir Ian McKellen, Emma Thompson and Ewan McGregor, who are pitch-perfect. Despite all the theatrics Condon employs, the movie feels too long; a couple of song-and-dance numbers go on for long, making the viewer fidget in their seat. A tighter screenplay and less indulgent editing would’ve made this retelling more enchanting.

To Read the full Story, Subscribe to ET PrimeSign in to read the full articleYou’ve got this Prime Story as a Free GiftWatson star cuts a demure, doll-like figure in Disney’s live-action remake, which features an outbreak of starry cameos and the world’s briefest gay reveal

Beauty And The Beast': Why Emma Waston As Belle Is 'perfect'

T he world’s most notorious case of Stockholm syndrome is back in cinemas. Disney now gives us a sprightly, shiny live-action remake of its 1991 animated musical fairytale, Beauty and the Beast, with Emma Watson as Belle, the elfin beauty from a humble French village whose poor old dad (Kevin Kline) is imprisoned by a wicked beast who lives in a remote castle. This is in fact a once handsome prince (played by Downton Abbey’s Dan Stevens), transformed into a monster by an enchantress as a punishment for his selfishness, while all his simpering courtiers were turned into household appliances such as candles and clocks. Belle offers to be his prisoner in her father’s place. Gradually the grumpy, soppy old Beast falls in love with her and she with him.

Everyone warbles the classic 1991 showtunes by composer Alan Menken and lyricist Howard Ashman, and there is a sugar-rush outbreak of starry cameos at the very end, from A-listers who are given full status in the final curtain-call credits. The whole movie is lit in that fascinatingly artificial honeyglow light, and it runs smoothly on rails – the kind of rails that bring in and out the stage sets for the lucrative Broadway touring version.

This movie is allegedly updating its assumptions to include a gay character … while leaving the heterosexual politics untouched. Beastly ugliness is symbolic of tragic male loneliness even as the imprisoned pretty woman submissively redeems her captor’s suffering. The Shrek twist on this scenario has more of a sense of humour: the woman becomes ugly as well.

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The gay character is Le Fou, played by Josh Gad — he is the nerdy sidekick to Belle’s caddish and malign suitor Gaston, amusingly played by Luke Evans. But Le Fou’s homosexuality is only definitively revealed as he pairs up with another man in a blink-and-you-miss-it moment at the final dance. Otherwise, his character is no different from the cringing sidekick in the 1991 version; whether Le Fou is the only or the most gay thing about the film is up for discussion, and it is the celebratory and witty connoisseurship of musical theatre in the gay community that has historically kept this genre vital.

Emma Watson is a demure, doll-like Belle, almost a figure who has stepped off the top of a music box; she never gives in to extravagant emotion, or retreats into depression, but maintains a kind of even-tempered dignified romantic solitude. She doesn’t set the screen ablaze, but that isn’t quite the point: she is well cast and it is a good performance from her. There is an