Beauty and the Beast

When I heard of Disney’s intentions to remake some of their classic animated features as live action films, I thought it was one of the worst ideas I ever heard. Then I saw The Jungle Book, and now I stand corrected. The original Jungle Book was far from Disney’s best, in my opinion. It had some good music, but the animation was pedestrian, unexciting. This new one is stunning.

It’s a little confusing when they call this “live action.” The boy who plays Mowgli is the only real human character. All the animals were computer generated. There are two more remakes in the works: Aladdin, and The Lion King. The latter won’t have any real live actors at all, so how can it be live action?

Well, whatever. This movie is stunning. If Walt could be thawed out from his cryo-freezer in Burbank and taken to a screening room, knowing nothing about computer animation, I’m sure he would really be wondering how they trained all those animals to act like that. Many of them are dangerous!