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Mamoru Hosoda’s Beauty and the Beast riff Belle argues for optimism about the internet

In this maximalist anime movie, a tale as old as time uploads to virtual reality

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by Annie Lyons

This review was originally published in conjunction with Belle ’s theatrical debut in American release. It has been updated and republished for the film’s digital and streaming release.

The kid-friendly moral of Beauty and the Beast (or at least the 1991 Disney version) is a simple one: “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” With the ambitious, decisively uncynical new anime movie Belle , writer-director Mamoru Hosoda adds to a long list of adaptations by updating the story for the internet age. Carefully fabricated online personas replace magical curses, and enchanted singing candlesticks transform into mewling AIs. But the director of Mirai and The Girl Who Leapt Through Time pushes the core message one step further by emphasizing how connection is a two-way street. It isn’t enough to recognize someone else’s true self without offering vulnerability in return. Produced by Hosoda’s Studio Chizu, this lush, spectacularly animated vision argues for the life-changing bonds that can develop when people shed their digital defenses.

Belle takes place in a near-future where a virtual-reality platform called U dominates the global consciousness. Singer Kaho Nakamura stars as Suzu, a shy provincial teen still grieving the death of her mother, who drowned rescuing a child from a flooding river. Suzu and her mom shared a love of music, and since the traumatic incident, Suzu has panic attacks when she tries to sing. She only regains confidence and her voice when she enters U as an avatar named Belle. With the help of her mischievous hacker friend Hiro (Lilas Ikuta), she inadvertently becomes a viral pop idol in the process.

For Suzu, U’s appeal is its capacity for reinvention — the virtual world promises escapism in the form of anonymity. (The platform’s ultimate punishment for wrongdoing is “Unveiling,” where an avatar is stripped away and the user behind it is exposed to the world.) When a misbehaving user known as the Dragon (Takeru Satoh) crashes one of Belle’s concerts, pursued by a group of warriors determined to Unveil him, Belle sets out to discover his secret.

The story of a shy girl finding her voice sounds predictable, but Belle takes the idea into surreal territory. This is a film that features a floating pop diva shedding crystals from atop a neon whale covered with speakers . The animation serves up a vivid feast for the eyes throughout, and a seamless integration of styles deepens Belle ’s world-building. Glossy 3D CG animates U, while the real world is illustrated in Hosoda’s familiar traditional style.

• The cathartic, thrilling fantasies of Mamoru Hosoda

Designed by renowned Disney animator Jin Kim, Belle resembles the studio’s quintessential princess, with a waifish face and impossibly big blue eyes. Suzu, on the other hand, looks like a typical cartoonish anime heroine, signaling the tension between her online and real selves. The Dragon cuts a twisted figure. A selling feature of U is its use of biometric data to link users’ actual bodies with their digital avatars, and the bruises tied to his real-life counterpart bloom across his hunched back like neon fungi.

Belle’s concerts explode in a smorgasbord of color and spectacle, but when the music switches off, U feels limitless but lonely. Designed by London architect Eric Wong, the omni-directional city lives in a near-perpetual twilight. Expansive Inception -style stacked buildings overwhelm the screen, but all their yellow windows are vacant. Adding to U’s amalgamation of ideas, Irish animation studio Cartoon Saloon ( Wolfwalkers ) contributed background work to the storybook-esque lands surrounding the Dragon’s crumbling castle.

Many of the castle’s details are drawn with white outlines, making the glitchy building look like it’ll flicker out of existence any second. The virtual platform is a fascinating curiosity in Belle , although it’s never made clear how non-viral stars spend their time in U, or how one control-obsessed vigilante hijacked the creators’ powers to expose users’ identities. Perhaps intentionally, though, the real world offers a more compelling place to stay. Lingering shots of the natural world and a warm array of details, like the faded inspirational Post-It notes on Suzu’s wall, or her three-legged dog, all make Suzu’s life feel lived-in.

And Suzu is struggling through that life. Her name means “bell” in English, but as her mom’s old choir points out, she’s more like a bell cricket hiding in the shadows. She struggles to relate to her dad and classmates. The latter emotional distance gets rendered physically by the long bus and train journey Suzu makes every day to get to school. She’s surrounded by empty chairs the whole journey. Loneliness is part of her routine. Hosoda makes this consideration of space explicit, with frequent wide shots of Suzu walking home alone. Similarly, as Suzu recalls her mother’s death, the young girl her mom rescues first appears in another wide shot against total blackness. Highlighting the girl’s isolation sets up parallels between Suzu’s decision to help the Dragon with her mom’s own choice.

Such shot compositions could start to feel on the nose, but Hosoda offers a point of contrast by using the same technique to emphasize closeness. Washed in fuzzy brushstrokes, Suzu’s memory with her childhood protector Shinibou (Ryō Narita) shows the pair clustered together, surrounded by soft yellow. When Belle later bonds with the Dragon during a dance homage to the Disney film, the pair flow up together against an expanse of empty sky. The two moments have completely opposite color palettes, getting at the idea that these attachments can form both offline and on.

Hosoda’s work often considers what it means to exist in two different spaces, by playing with separate timelines and realities. Even his film Wolf Children intertwined this theme by considering the dual identities of its werewolf leads. With near-identical opening sequences, Belle ’s premise feels like the updated version of Hosoda’s Summer Wars , another virtual-reality story that warns against over-integrating technology through an apocalyptic scenario. In Belle , though, the stakes are much more intimate and grounded in character growth. The fate of the universe doesn’t rest on Suzu’s shoulders; all that matters is whether she can get through to one person who needs help. The film’s climax hinges on her reconciling the disconnect between her two selves to be able to truly open up.

The idea that people online only advertise the parts of themselves they want others to see isn’t novel. Neither is the revelation that anonymity breeds spite. At times, Belle ’s depiction of online judgment via overlapping dialogue and chat bubbles feels trite. Hosoda knows better than to attribute all our worst instincts solely to the internet, though. One of the film’s most inventive sequences shows Suzu quelling vicious school gossip through targeted responses, which Hosada visualizes as if she’s conquering countries in a Risk -esque hexagonal game board. The message is clear: Rumors travel whatever way they can. “The world is the same everywhere,” Suzu sighs.

Hosoda also grounds the eventual reveals about the Dragon in real life, which leads to an abrupt final-act tonal shift that he doesn’t quite pull off. What seems intended as a message of courage comes out as a misguided statement about conquering impossible situations through resilience. Given the delicate subject matter, the story ends on an unsettling note.

Still, the core of the movie is about empathy, and Hosoda’s sentimentality is compelling, even at its most overstated and earnest. Belle doesn’t shy away from online toxicity, but it advocates for a hopeful perspective on the ways the internet can connect people in meaningful, supportive ways. Hosoda deeply wants to believe that online interactions can be used for good. Because if not, what else could all this relentless online misery possibly be for?

Belle is now available for digital rental on platforms like Amazon , Vudu , and others.

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‘Belle’ Review: ‘Beauty and the Beast’ Meets ‘The Matrix’ in Mamoru Hosoda’s Dazzling Anime

David ehrlich.

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Editor’s note: This review was originally published at the 2021 Cannes   Film Festival. GKIDS releases the film in theaters on Friday, January 14.

“ Beauty and the Beast ” meets online bullying in a hyper-modern anime riff on the classic fairy tale (or at least the Disney version of it), as “Miraï” director Mamoru Hosoda pushes his boundless imagination to new extremes in a visually dazzling musical about how J-Pop can save the world. If that seems like too much ground for a cartoon to cover in the span of a two-hour coming-of-age story, keep in mind that Hosoda has a knack for reaching familiar places in rivetingly unexpected fashions. Case in point: The heroine of “ Belle ” enters the movie atop a flying humpback whale that’s barnacled with hundreds of stereo speakers.

It’s a fitting introduction to a film that wows you with its wild vision of internet age identity even when it doesn’t reveal anything that isn’t already self-evident. But Hosoda is a born maximalist with a big heart, and while his most ambitious moonshot to date isn’t quite able to arrange all of its moving parts together along the same orbit, it’s impressive to see how many of them remain moving all the same.

At its core, “Belle” is a delirious fusion between a tale as old as time and technology that’s yet to be invented — one set in a world where everyone is desperate to be visible, but deeply afraid of being seen. Still reeling from the death of her mother, 17-year-old Suzu (voiced by Kaho Nakamura) is such an introverted wallflower that her demented hacker BFF Hiroka (Rina Izuta) refers to her as the dark side of the moon. The mousy Suzu doesn’t think she deserves to be described in such grandiose terms; a young former music lover who hasn’t been able to find her voice since her mom drowned saving a random child from a riptide, she thinks of herself instead as “a bell cricket singing in the shadows” (Suzu translates to “bell” in Japanese). There must be more than this provincial life, but Suzu is too withdrawn to explore what that might be, and her emotionally distant dad (the great Kôji Yakusho in a small role) isn’t going to be much help.

That’s when Suzu discovers the world of “U.” How is it that she hadn’t known about a fully immersive social media service (with five billion users!) that invites people to be reborn as avatars that are determined from biometric analyses of their inner strengths? It’s best not to ask such questions about the ins and outs of this virtual reality landscape; nobody can be told what the Matrix is, and the same applies to U. Suffice to say that it looks like an eye-popping cross between the digital world of OZ from Hosoda’s “Summer Wars” and the endless downtown mind city of the lowest dream level from “Inception.”

Unlike the ruined wasteland in Christopher Nolan’s film, however, U is teeming with a ridiculous array of characters who range from starfish to luchadores to a squadron of self-appointed Justices who dress in matching white superhero outfits and police the cybersphere by effectively doxxing anyone they deem unworthy. At the top of their most wanted list: A hunched MMA-fighting cow monster named Dragon — but not so affectionately referred to as “the Beast.” Little do the Justices know that their quarry broods away his time in a floating castle on the outskirts of a glitchy wooded maze and guards his deepest secret inside a bushel of binary roses.

But the Beast is yesterday’s news in the U-niverse now that everyone’s obsessed with the platform’s newest superstar, a radiant singer named Belle (whose absolute banger of a debut single is performed by the J-pop group millennium parade). Belle, of course, is our dear Suzu IRL, though only to a certain extent; her avatar’s pink-haired and pointy-nosed anime perfection is owed to Suzu’s prettiest classmate, whose face she borrowed out of an abiding sense of insecurity. Everybody has a secret, and sometimes it feels like the only way to survive on the internet is to keep everybody else from wanting to know what yours might be. If only computers gave us more than just two options: “Cancel” or “Okay.”

For all of its supercharged visual spectacle and the frisson that Hosoda creates from threading a fairy tale story through the ugliness of the online world, this is mighty familiar material for anime fans who’ve been looking for digital connections since the wired days of “Serial Experiments Lain,” or JRPG players who’ve grappled with the malignant darkness of our shadow selves in the “Persona” series for hundreds of hours at a time. The beauty of “Belle,” however strained it can be, is that Hosoda sincerely believes in the potential upside of social media — he recognizes that most people on the internet are looking for someone to feel their pain rather than someone to inflict it upon (a subtle distinction, easily confused). Many of them just don’t quite realize that. Not even Belle herself, whose curiosity in the Beast is only explained in the most abstract terms, and isn’t quite strong enough to support the obligatory ballroom dancing sequence.

The fact that Suzu’s mom died saving a total stranger is the kind of first act detail that can be easily lost in a movie that unfolds like a technicolor parade of stray ideas; on top of everything else, “Belle” also makes time for several unexpectedly affecting romantic subplots, a Greek chorus of middle-aged women who share a big secret, and a scene in which Suzu’s social circle is represented as a fiery game of “Risk.” But no matter how many things are happening between the film’s analog and online worlds, Hosoda constantly returns to the selfless philosophy embodied by Suzu’s mom: The concept that a stranger’s life might be afforded the same value that we typically reserve for our own. It’s an idea that exists in violent contradiction to how the internet usually works, which is why it manages to cut through the noise and hold this movie together even when its finale blurs the border that separates the U from “reality” by introducing a handful of pivotal new characters.

Not all of Hosoda’s ideas manage to hold as much water, and some (particularly the positive implication that pain can be a source of online strength) are so glancingly explored that including them here does more harm than good. The flimsier those concepts are, the flimsier the drama is to support them. The connection between the Dragon and their actual identity is poignant but underdeveloped in a way that makes the “Beauty and the Beast” of it all feel shoehorned into a movie that only needs that aspect of it for its  metaphor. Meanwhile, the relationships between Suzu and the people she knows IRL are rendered so beautifully in the little time Hosoda affords them that it’s hard not to wish he’d scale back on sensory-overload spectacle and let real life do the talking. It’s telling that the film’s best scene is contained within a single, motionless shot inside of an ordinary train station.

Nevertheless, “Belle” earns much of its charm from the sheer mania of Hosoda’s mind. The film may be stretched too thin as the real world and the U pull it in opposite directions, but that same tug-of-war between basic human feelings and the impossibly colorful orgy of emotions they explodes into online — the way it frays on both ends, and makes it hard for the center to hold — is also what allows “Belle” to feel so true even as it falls deeper and deeper into fairy tale logic. If the moral of this story is ultimately a simple one, at least Suzu learns it in a way too novel to forget: The internet can give anyone a voice, but it’s only a beautiful place when people actually hear each other.

“Belle” premiered at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival. GKids will release it in the United States later this year.

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Belle Is a Spectacular Retelling of Beauty and the Beast by Way of the Metaverse

The metaverse has arrived in Belle , and it’s a spectacular sanctuary five billion users strong and thrumming with endless possibility — as well as with all the resentment, shame, obsession, and commercialization that might send someone fleeing from the real world in the first place. Movies tend to reflexively treat online immersion as the stuff of a cautionary tale, but Mamoru Hosoda’s latest is more clear-eyed about the internet being just another home for human messiness. “You can’t start over in reality, but you can start over in U,” a voice-over promises at the outset of Belle , as the film spirals through a dizzying digital landscape to find its heroine belting out a song from the back of a speaker-adorned whale gliding through cyberspace. But while the film’s characters are able to reinvent themselves as virtual pop stars and glowering creatures, their problems still have a way of bleeding through. With the Dragon, the mysterious and violent figure that Suzu (Kaho Nakamura) becomes obsessed with, that bleed is literal. The bright patterns on his back turn out to correspond with bruises on the body of the person controlling it.

Belle is Hosoda’s eighth feature and the one that feels like the most coherent blend of the various universes he’s straddled as an animator. He came up worshiping Miyazaki (who among us) but working on Digimon , and when he was finally offered a job with Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli — he was originally supposed to direct Howl’s Moving Castle — his sensibility didn’t mesh with the house style. Hosoda is prone to exuberant flights of fancy, which extend from casual instances of time travel to magical beasts, but he’s also had a persistent interest in rendering virtual worlds onscreen going back to his Toei days. A 2000 short he made about a rogue Digimon that hacks the Pentagon and launches a ballistic missile at Japan became the inspiration for his 2009 feature Summer Wars , a compelling mutant creation in which a group of teens, with an assist from a well-connected aristocratic family, try to stop an AI intent on bringing about a cheery digital apocalypse. The breathtaking Belle is an explicit attempt to wed the fairy tale with the high tech, retelling Beauty and the Beast by way of social media. But as is often the case with Hosoda, it’s the extracurricular details that make his work so moving, the textures of the everyday lives of his characters that become something larger and more profound when placed in contrast to the genre elements at the center of his story.

Suzu, for instance, may be a celebrity in U, but outside of it she’s a nondescript teenager who’s largely invisible at her school aside from her friendship with the acerbic Hiro (Lilas Ikuta) and the occasional protective gesture from Shinobu (Ryō Narita), a childhood friend who’s grown up to be a heartthrob. The film wordlessly sums up her dying rural community with a montage of her morning commute through empty train stations and quiet bus routes that signs announce are on the verge of being discontinued. When she was young, she witnessed her mother’s death, a memory presented like a totem that she can’t help but haul out and consider whenever she has a quiet moment. Her mother waded into a flooding river and drowned in the process of rescuing a stranded kid, and Suzu has trouble seeing past her own sense of abandonment to glimpse the bravery of this act. This tragedy silenced Suzu, who learned to love music from her mother and found herself unable to sing after her death. It’s only in U, shielded by anonymity and a princess-style avatar with rose-gold hair, that Suzu can free her voice. The pleasant but muted tones of the real world contrast with the overwhelming busyness of U, where the lack of gravity and boundless space allows for a concert venue in the shape of a hollow planet and for crumbling gothic castles as personal hideouts.

U serves as an escape, but Belle keeps drawing parallels between the behavior of people around Suzu and that of the avatars in this supposed digital paradise. When the Dragon interrupts one of Belle’s concerts, he becomes the target of U’s self-appointed police force, whose ultimate weapon is doxing. When Suzu’s suspected of having some kind of romantic entanglement with Shinobu, she barely avoids becoming the target of group-chat gossip deeming her unworthy of such a pairing. Group cruelty, self-righteousness masquerading as justice, and reinforced social strata are as much factors in the fable that inspired Belle as they are in social media, age-old patterns revisited in new digital forms. While Hosoda presents a lot of spectacular imagery, his film’s high point is one that blends its online fantasy world with the mundane real one in a startlingly poignant moment that emphasizes the ways that everything and nothing has changed as humanity keeps moving forward. The metaverse is just the latest means of hiding our most vulnerable parts from the world, and being seen for who we are remains a real act of daring.

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Review: In ‘Belle,’ a dazzling anime ‘Beauty and the Beast’

This image released by GKids shows a scene from “Belle.” (GKids via AP)

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Anime master Mamoru Hosoda makes movies that, even at their most elaborate, can reach such staggeringly emotional heights that they seem to break free of anything you’re prepared for in an animated movie — or in most kinds of movies, for that matter.

Any talented Japanese filmmaker working in fantastical animation inevitably draws comparisons to the great Hayao Miyazaki. But the more appropriate touchstone for Hosoda may be Yasujirō Ozu. As dazzling as Hosoda’s films may be visually or conceptually, they’re rooted in simple and profound human stories.

His last film, the Oscar-nominated “Mirai,” is one of the best movies made in recent years about family. It centered on a 4-year-old boy who, dealing with the arrival of a new baby sister and confronting new feelings of jealousy, is visited by his sister as a middle-schooler. Other time-traveling encounters follow, and a new understanding and empathy grows in the boy.

Hosoda’s latest, “Belle,” which opened in theaters Wednesday, is more complicatedly sketched. It’s an ultra-modern take on “Beauty and the Beast” that transfers the fairy tale to a digital metaverse realm called “U.” There, in a dizzying digital expanse that will satisfy any “Matrix” fan who felt let down by the virtual worlds of “The Matrix Resurrections,” its 5 billion users can adapt any persona they like.

The 17-year-old Suzu (voiced by Kaho Nakamura in the subtitled version I saw; an English dub is also playing) reluctantly joins U as an avatar named Belle, a more exotic beauty than the modest and shy Suzu. In the U, Belle’s songs find massive stardom that’s much unlike Suzu’s own life, where one of her only friends is Hiroka (Lilas Ikuta), a computer whiz who helps craft Belle. In U, Belle finds herself drawn to the metaverse’s notorious villain called the Dragon (or the Beast) who’s hunted by a police-like force that wants peace and free-flowing commerce in U.

You might be thinking that an anime “Beauty and the Beast” turned into internet parable sounds a tad overelaborate — and about the furthest thing from the sage simplicity of Ozu. It’s indeed a lot that Hosoda is going for here, and “Beauty and the Beast” doesn’t always seem a useful form for all the ideas floating around. At times, “Belle” bends and cracks under its grand ambitions.

But the heart of Hosoda’s sincere film never falters. Taking place in both modern-day Japan and the virtual U, its foot in reality is firmly planted. Our first vision of Suzu is as a young girl watching her mother, in an act of brave selflessness, lose her life saving a child from a flood. Loss and grief have consumed Suzu’s childhood; her virtual transformation into Belle is a chance to free herself from some of her everyday struggles. Music had been part of her bond with her mother. That tragic backdrop — how we treat strangers — is also part of the lessons of U, where anonymity breeds good and ill. On the whole, this is a surprisingly positive view of the capacity of the internet for connection and liberation. But what’s most striking is how Hosoda marries both realities despite their vast differences. Each world shimmers. Clouds are rendered as mesmerizing as anything in U.

The movie ultimately resides, intimately, with Suzu. Even with all that’s going on, “Belle” is deeply attuned to its protagonist’s hurts, memories and dreams. Every moment flits between her past and present, reality and virtual reality. These worlds ultimately merge in a scene of astounding catharsis — a song sung not by Belle, but Suzu — and it’s one of the most intensely beautiful moments you’re likely to see, anywhere.

“Belle,” a GKIDS release, is rated PG by the Motion Picture Association of America for thematic content, violence, language and brief suggestive material. Running time: 121 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.

This review has been updated to correct the voice actor for the character Hiroka. She is voiced by Lilas Ikuta.

Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP

Belle review : The most dazzling sci-fi epic in years is here

Cross the bridge between reality and fantasy in this new animated odyssey.

Filmmaker Mamoru Hosoda has built a career on grounding the surreal elements of storytelling with the human condition. With his earlier works (Summer Wars and Wolf Children ), Hosada demonstrated a tremendous ability to instill magic into the most seemingly ordinary moments, giving high stakes to daily struggles and tempering apocalyptic threats with unwavering hope. His stories are fairy tales , something that makes his latest film Belle , a new iteration of The Beauty and the Beast , well suited to his sensibilities.

Hosada’s curiosity and warmth toward reality make a perfect combination to elevate a story where an ordinary girl finds herself somewhere sensational. Now playing in theaters, Belle encapsulates Hosada’s finest animation and most emotionally gripping tale. Despite already setting a high bar for himself with Belle , the filmmaker exceeds expectations through gusto and creative passion that has long marked him as one of the very best in the medium.

Written and directed by Mamoru Hosoda, Belle follows Suzu (Kaho Nakamura), an introverted high school student who becomes a globally renowned singer known as Belle after entering an incredibly popular virtual world called U. However, U can’t simply remain Suzu’s means for escape. Soon, she embarks on a quest in both the real world and U to uncover the identity of a mysterious beast (Takeru Satoh), who's on the run from ruthless vigilantes.

Hosoda’s ability to build tangible tension between the real and fantasy worlds allows his animated films to flourish in the genre. This is all demonstrated beautifully through the art itself. The real world is drawn with cruder lines, and there’s a deliberate lack of stillness to characters as they run to enact a rescue, play for the school band, or hide behind their hands in deep-seated embarrassment.

In comparison, the virtual world where the movie spends half of its time is sleek with stark and structured lines and edges. It’s a shared, anonymous utopia where everyone has their own make and model. But amidst that color and cornucopia of archetypal variations, a rigidity remains. So when Belle and the Beast begin to draw unwanted and unwarranted ire, they stick out because they don’t blend perfectly into the background. When they shatter the artificial and literal glass, the shards are angular, luminous, and dangerous but still a part of the spectacle.

The Beast and Belle in Mamoru Hosoda’s new animated film.

Belle continues its series of thematic and visual contrasts, which build to a crescendo in two breathtaking, standout moments. Belle and Beast float together in one scene while the world bustles around them. Another moment sees Belle standing in front of all of U to belt out her song — her plea to the Beast’s real-world identity to hear her and believe that she only wants to help. And what amplifies the intensity of these scenes is how the film realizes Belle’s characterization through design. She's a shy high-school student with an extraordinary gift who has endured loss and possesses the capability to save others who are in dire need of her empathy.

Produced by Studio Chizu, the film also received help from veteran Disney animator and character designer Jin Kim and Michael Camacho on Belle’s design, while Cartoon Saloon (the studio behind Wolfwalkers , Song of the Sea ) assisted with the background world of U. Hosada’s touch may be most eminent on the final product, but by collaborating from different studios and artists, the filmmaker transforms the atmosphere of Belle , in particular the environment inside U, into something universal. Considering this is a fictional place for anyone, wherever they may be, to congregate, it adds an extra layer onto an already expansive world.

Belle may be visually stunning but its story and characters are just as dazzling.

Beyond the stellar animation and writing, Belle’s most integral element is its music. Composed by Taisei Iwasaki, Ludvig Forssell, Yuta Bandoh, and Miho Hazama with performances from Nakamura, the score and Belle’s voice strike chords of whimsy, heartache, and fierce determination. A newcomer to voice acting, Nakamura is extraordinary, imbuing certain variations of the same song with energy and sorrow depending on where her character is on her journey. The film spends a decent amount of time lingering on the awestruck faces of characters watching her perform, and Belle earns those moments because the songs and Nakumura’s voice are that enchanting.

Belle is hardly a radical story. It’s inspired by one of the most famous fairy tales of all time., and the journey of a character emerging from grief to become a stronger version of one’s self is a narrative we’ve seen plenty of. But Belle isn’t attempting to challenge viewers. Instead, it explores humanity’s contradictions — the natural divisions we contend with every day — to emphasize what connects us.

Music is a means of escape in this world, and Suzu uses her profound empathy to save someone else and unburden them from their suffering. As a statement on the power of community, art, and the bonds of friendship, Belle shows us the very best of what fantasy and reality can gift us and the magic that happens between the creation of both.

Belle opens in theaters on January 14.

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Belle: Mamoru Hosoda Retells Beauty & the Beast for the Internet Age

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Beauty and the Beast , though a timeless fairy tale, has been synonymous with one studio for the past 30 years -- Disney. How do creators hoping to put their own spin on it stop audiences from thinking back to that iconic, yellow ballgown and Gaston tunefully guzzling eggs, then? Mamoru Hosoda's take on the story,  Belle , is well aware of this. His solution? Don't avoid it, lean into it: more than one scene in Hosoda's stunningly realized anime is a shot-for-shot homage to the 1991 Disney version. If that weren't enough, Hosoda also enlisted help from the source --  Jin Kim , a veteran animator/character designer from Disney Studios.

A few visual cues are where the similarities end, though. Belle is a distinctly unique take on the French fairy tale, perhaps even more inventive than Disney's, and equally as enchanting.

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The titular "Belle" is a girl living a double life: in reality, she's 17-year-old Suzu Naito, a meek and troubled Japanese high schooler who lost her childhood passion for music following a traumatic event. On the Internet, however, Suzu's singing voice returns, making her an overnight, online sensation in the virtual world of "U." As this premise suggests, Belle is also a musical, and while the soundtrack may not be destined for Broadway, the score -- and Belle's otherworldly vocalist -- is still one you'll want to revisit. For a story selling you on the idea of a singing viral sensation, the music being believably good is key.

Belle is not the only Internet celebrity on the block, though. A scrappy, monster of an avatar known as "The Dragon" has been causing chaos among the U community for months. But when he and Belle cross paths, she finds herself oddly drawn to him. Thus, Beauty meets her Beast with a 21st-century cyber twist.

RELATED: WATCH: Summer Wars Director's New Film, Belle, Debuts the First Three Minutes

This isn't even the first time that Hosoda -- known for  Digimon: The Movie ,   The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Summer Wars  and  Mirai  -- has referenced  Beauty and the Beast in his work. Its influence is also clear in 2015's  The Boy and the Beast , to name just one.  Belle  is perhaps the most overt adaptation, but even with both the original tale and Disney being clear blueprints, the film still manages to go in unexpected directions.

That isn't to say Hosoda fans will be all  that  surprised by the structure and themes of  Belle : all the usual Hosoda-isms are there, right down to a group of people being brought around a computer for the big finish. Clearest of all is the director's continuing belief in technology, and the Internet specifically, as a force for social good. Though there are some passing comments made on the negative impact being a digital native can have on young girls , like his past work, Hosoda's aspirational view of the Internet hasn't changed since he used the power of email to stop the Big Bad in the first  Digimon  movie 20 years ago.

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As nice as this is, it's arguable that there's a missed opportunity here. Hosoda uses the splintering effect (the phenomenon of 'catfishing') that happens between our real and online personas to interesting -- and sometimes comedic -- effect, but those aforementioned passing comments could plumb a little deeper.

In a more cynical film, the psychology of the Suzu/Belle divide could have been better used to explore the harm that social media and digital augmentation has on body image, beauty standards and the cruel flipside of celebrity statuses for women. Instead, the world of U is mostly a harmonious realm of playful escapism, minus a few bad apples.

Suzu is still a far more fleshed out character than most Belles: painfully insecure and lonesome but desperate for expressivity and purpose, which is what compels her to unravel the mystery of The Dragon's origin. Though it deals with some very dark subject matter, especially for younger audiences,  Belle  is also as tonally well-balanced as any great Disney film. One scene in which two of Suzu's classmates awkwardly attempt to confess their mutual feelings has some wonderfully animated physical comedy, mostly done through body language alone.

Hosoda has rarely made any missteps during his career and  Belle  is one of his most triumphant dances yet. After drumming up a lot of critical acclaim on the festival circuit (including a 14-minute standing ovation at Cannes ), the film may well repeat some of the  Beauty and the Beast 's success at the next Academy Awards. Maybe there's a good reason directors like Hosoda keep coming back to Belle and the Beast.

First released in Japanese cinemas on July 16 as Ryu to Sobakasu no Hime (literally translated "The Dragon and the Princess of Freckles,") Mamoru Hosoda's  Belle  will begin its theatrical run in US cinemas Jan. 14, 2022.

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Long before cellular devices became nearly vital, Mamoru Hosoda had already found a creative well in virtual universes.

The Japanese director, who specializes in whimsical stories about complicated family dynamics and received an Oscar nomination for his 2018 animated feature “Mirai,” first engaged with the online transmutation of our lives in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s. With multiple projects within the popular “Digimon” media franchise, centered on digital creatures populating a parallel realm, he honed his directorial abilities.

“I’m probably one of the few, maybe the only director, who’s been taking on the theme of the internet for 20 years in various projects,” said Hosoda via an interpreter during a recent interview in Los Angeles.

While Hosoda’s mesmerizing narratives often feature alternative realities and characters concealing their true selves, his preoccupation with the internet as we know it today came to the foreground in 2009’s “Summer Wars,” an exhilarating film focused on young people trying to prevent catastrophe in the real world by defeating a malignant force in an online battle.

Review: ‘Belle’ is a striking virtual reality riff on ‘Beauty and the Beast’

This cutting-edge fairy tale is the most ambitious work yet from Mamoru Hosoda, the director of animated films including “Mirai,” “Wolf Children” and “Summer Wars.”

Jan. 13, 2022

Hosoda’s latest conceptually daring adventure, “Belle,” now in theaters, situates the old-age fairy tale of “Beauty and the Beast” within the context of virtual interactions. Sheepish teenager Suzu — voiced in Japanese by Kaho Nakamura and by Kylie McNeill in the English dub — lacks confidence at school, while at home communication with her father is strained.

But in the world of U — a digital platform in which 5 billion users take the form of vivid avatars that manifest their inner qualities — she transforms into Belle, a ravishing pop star that entrances users until a beastly dragon seemingly threatens the balance of this computer network kingdom. “I thought that the duality between reality and the internet world versus the duality of the beast made for an interesting contrast,” Hosoda explained.

Years before beginning production on “Belle,” Hosoda met the legendary Glen Keane, who served as supervising animator Disney’s 1991 adaptation of “Beauty and the Beast,” specifically for the Beast character. “I wanted to make sure I got his blessing when I knew I wanted to make my own version,” noted Hosoda. More recently, the two met again. Keane, who had seen “Belle,” congratulated him on adapting the famous fable for the digital age.

The Times spoke with Hosoda about taking inspiration from Disney, the attributes and deficits of online life and the special role music plays in the unique world of “Belle.”

How do you think our relationship to the internet has changed in the years between your work on “Summer Wars” and “Belle,” given that both films partly take place in an alternative online world?

There’s certainly been a big shift in how we relate to the internet. Twenty years ago, when I directed “Digimon Adventure,” it seemed like a space where a lot of the younger generations would reside and smash the old establishment way of doing things to form a new world for themselves. And 12 years ago, when I directed “Summer Wars,” a lot more people were able to access the internet and it became a little bit more common, but it still remained this kind of open and hopeful space for new types of innovation and creativity.

But today, when I’ve directed “Belle,” almost everyone is on the internet and it’s a necessity for daily life in many ways. A lot of those more negative aspects of our own society have been brought into the world of the internet, like toxic behaviors and a fake news. That’s how I’ve seen the internet shift over the years.

What’s your personal relationship to social media?

In the beginning, I had a Twitter account myself, but nowadays I don’t post on it too much, if at all, because rather than tweeting or speaking on an individual level on Twitter, I’d much rather focus on creating new stories and projects. But looking at my children and the way that they use the internet, I think a lot of the younger generations are not going to be able to detach themselves from a very internet-centric culture. So taking into consideration their future and how they must face these two worlds of reality and the internet, I wanted to make a film like this.

Tell me about the first time you watched the Disney version of “Beauty and the Beast.” Why did it become such a major source of inspiration for you?

I really love the story of “Beauty and the Beast,” especially how these values seem to be inverted, where something that may appear beautiful could possibly be ugly and vice versa ... When I was in college, I saw the Jean Cocteau version of “Beauty and the Beast” from 1946. I was really moved by it. But after graduating college, I joined a company called Toei Animation ... and it was a bit of a struggle, I confess. It was back in 1991. Because of how challenging the job was, I contemplated quitting and perhaps shifting industries or going into something else besides animation.

But then in 1992 when Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” was released in Japan, I was absolutely amazed by what that movie was able to accomplish. Here I was almost losing my passion toward animation, but this movie gave me that second wind to stick it out and try hard and see what I could do in the world of animation. Just knowing what kinds of expressions were possible through animation helped me.

I was still fresh out of college and didn’t have much money, but I saved up and bought the box set of “Beauty and the Beast” that came with extra behind-the-scenes footage. In one of those extras was Glen Keane who showed how he would do the key frames in the movie. I really admired him ever since then. I thought to myself, “One day, I want to make my own interpretation of ‘Beauty and the Beast.’”

On “Belle,” you decided to work with Jin Kim, the South Korean animator and character designer for Disney films such as “Hercules,” “Fantasia 2000” and “Tangled.” What was it about him and his artistry that you thought worked for this project?

We wanted to work with people who came from many different backgrounds and Jin Kim is someone for whom I have a lot of respect, and I think the way he illustrates and can draw is just absolutely beautiful. Sometimes in interviews I get asked, “Oh, did you hire Jin Kim cause you wanted your movie to look more Disneyesque?” I disagree and say, “No, I wanted to look more Jin Kim-esque — not the entire brand of Disney, but specifically his drawings and how he is able to bring out those characters.”

Kim designed the title character Belle, a radiant pop star and Suzu’s alter ego. What aesthetic and emotional traits did you discuss for her?

We didn’t talk too much about the character’s appearance or exterior. We were more focused on what Suzu had inside of herself and what her other possibilities may look like, as someone who shares the same soul as Suzu, but has a very different kind of visual expression.

At the time, our Japanese character designer, Hiroyuki Aoyama, had already designed Suzu, the character in our reality, the real world. Jin Kim had that at as a visual reference and a lot of the discussion centered on what would her mental avatar or projection feel like. She is someone who on the outside may seem like she has really low self-esteem, but when she is able to attain that freedom in another form, that’s the soul that we want to depict.

Tell me about finding Eric Wong, who you hired to help you create the imposing and free-flowing digital world of U. What were some of the key ideas that influenced the design?

The story of “Belle” is very much about this unknown girl from a very suburban town in the countryside of Japan and how she rose to international stardom. Perhaps I was influenced by the story myself. I believed that the designer able to accurately represent the visual look or visual expression of what the world of U would look like would be found on the internet. So I was just searching on the internet for quite some time and came across Eric Wong’s portfolio online.

At the time I had no idea who he was, where he was from, or if he even had moviemaking experience. We got to talking and I found out that he’s based in London. He is a 27-year-old architect who had absolutely no moviemaking experience, but I really saw his talent in his portfolio. We decided to create the world of U together and settled on this idea of a mega city to represent how complex the internet has become. It doesn’t have up or down or left or right, it’s a very fictitious conceptual space. A lot of our conversations were much more conceptual rather than about how we wanted it to appear visually. He was able to translate that into the visual depiction of those ideas that you see in the film.

Belle’s songs are the soul the film. How involved were you in the writing of the lyrics and the composition of the music? What was the principal dramatic purpose of these memorable tracks?

The music in “Belle” wasn’t supposed to simply be something that was dropped into the movie for the sake of having music. It was very much intended to have the approach of a musical, where there was an emotional journey associated with the music and lyrics themselves. Because of that, I couldn’t just give it to a singer-songwriter or an artist and say, “Hey, come up with something.” So I did the first pass on what the lyrics and what the emotional journey or beats of the songs were intended to convey. Then I worked with composer Taisei Iwasaki and the singer Kaho Nakamura to come up with what the final lyrics would become.

In “Belle,” on a superficial level, there is this rise from being a nobody to becoming an international pop star but that wasn’t entirely what is happening. Underneath that it’s very much about Suzu being suppressed and how through music, in this case her voice and song, she’s able to find freedom. We created the music with this in our mind. It wasn’t supposed to mimic a popular Billboard Top 10 song. It’s intended to go much deeper.

In “Belle,” people are able to put on a mask and become someone different online, detach from who they are in reality. Why do you think this ability for a double life is so enticing for some?

In the beginning, the internet was a tool of communication or a tool of convenience, but today it’s turned into something massive. It has its own social structure and its own social impact upon us. If you look at what social media is doing, it is very much its own separate world, so I believe that we now, without even realizing it, are living in two separate but equally relevant and real realities. Maybe a while ago it was the real world versus the internet or versus fantasy, but right now it’s reality and another reality and we are looking and how much they can affect each other.

Part of the reason why I feel we’ve transitioned into this is because perhaps it’s too cramped to simply live in one world anymore. You see this a lot with the younger generations, especially. They need another reality or more room to stretch their legs and express other facets of themselves. When we only had one reality, it was entirely possible for someone to be born into this world and live in this reality that only allows for one or two sides of them to be expressed and then die, unfortunately. But now that we have this other world, people can find new ways to live up to their maximum potential. That is a big theme in “Belle.”

There’s a negative side to this phenomenon, online bullying and harassment. Yet, your work, it seems, tries to approach all the topics related to the internet with an edge of hopefulness, rather than with a fatalistic lens.

I wanted to make sure we were depicting a rather positive side of the internet. To your point, there is definitely a lot of toxicity, and I wanted to make sure that side of the internet was also represented in the movie because it’s important to show the reality of what is happening. In spite of that, overall, I believe it has the potential to shift in a more positive direction. Whenever there’s a really groundbreaking new technology or innovation, there’s a tendency to, especially from adults, interpret it in a much more negative light.

Other movies that deal with internet culture tend to paint a much more dystopian picture of how the internet is somehow stripping us of our humanity, but innovation like this, I don’t think can be stopped. If you go all the way back into the history of film, and look at Charlie Chaplin’s “Modern Times,” just because it painted the Industrial Revolution and mass producing in a negative light doesn’t mean we were not going to go through with this revolution. Similarly, you can’t take the smartphones from these kids and expect them to go back to the farm and grow vegetables.

In that regard, we must acknowledge and learn how to approach this correctly and live with it. Knowing that this next generation is going to have to live in this new reality, why paint such a negative picture of it? We can definitely focus on the more positive sides that it has to offer and help push us forward.

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Things to do | ‘belle’ is a striking virtual reality riff on ‘beauty and the beast’, this cutting-edge fairy tale is the most ambitious work yet from mamoru hosoda, director of animated films including ‘mirai,’ ‘wolf children’ and “summer wars’.

Does this ring a 'Belle'? Storied anime writer-director Mamoru Hosoda's newest resets 'Beauty and the Beast' in a musical, virtual environment — among other modern twists.

A scene from Mamoru Hosoda's anime feature "Belle."

Does this ring a 'Belle'? Storied anime writer-director Mamoru Hosoda's newest resets 'Beauty and the Beast' in a musical, virtual environment — among other modern twists.

“Belle,” a dazzling new anime from the Japanese director Mamoru Hosoda , drops us into a surreal cyberscape known as “U,” where internet users hide behind outlandish avatars, enormous humpback whales float through the digital ether and a nobody can become a somebody overnight. That nobody would be Suzu (voiced by Kaho Nakamura in the original Japanese version), a moody, freckled teenager who finds herself suddenly reborn as Belle, a pink-haired, silver-voiced diva who racks up millions of followers, even as she draws the attention of a mysteriously bruised and brooding Beast. It’s a tale as old as time and as newfangled as TikTok, in which the virtual world, though packed with fantasy and artifice, can bring startling truths to the surface.

Hosoda sketches in Suzu’s pre-virtual existence early on, with a mix of present-day bustle and aching flashbacks that coalesce into a messily moving portrait of teenage malaise. We witness the terrible tragedy that scarred her childhood and the sadness and shyness that have haunted her ever since. We also learn about her love for singing, a gift she’s stifled in the midst of her near-constant anxiety and grief. All these traits — Suzu’s sensitivity, her loneliness, her musicality and, yes, her freckles — wind up shaping her avatar, Belle, thanks to the wonders of U’s groundbreaking “body-sharing technology,” which draws directly on a user’s physical and psychological makeup. In other words, Belle isn’t just a mask; she’s a striking reflection of who Suzu is, as well as a portal into an intense new plane of existence. Like all U avatars, she provides both concealment and revelation.

If that sounds like a somewhat idealized view of technology, well, it is. Hosoda’s virtual reality conceit may hail from a still-distant future, but he isn’t in a particularly dystopian mood. Technology has its pitfalls, of course, as the movie demonstrates with light dollops of social media satire. As Belle becomes U’s newest celebrity, she brings out all manner of online trolls: knee-jerk cynics, jealous rivals and many others who dislike the songs she sings and dismiss her as an attention hog. (Suzu is horrified to have so many haters, but her tech-whiz best friend, Hiroka, sets her straight: “If you only get compliments, you only have hard-core fans,” she notes. “In U, stardom is built on mixed reception.”)

Suzu must also deal with everyone’s curiosity over who Belle really is, and she clings tightly to the anonymity that has paradoxically enabled her to shine so bright. She isn’t the only one keeping her identity a secret, of course, and in that respect, the extravagantly stylized world of U isn’t all that different from Suzu’s small-town high school, where she’s one of many hiding their feelings in plain sight. Masks proliferate in “Belle,” not all of them strictly virtual; in a flurry of romantic-comedy subplots, we meet a number of Suzu’s classmates, who turn out to have unspoken desires and anxieties of their own. (They lend the story some sweet emotional heft, as do the choir ladies who provide Suzu with moral support.)

But the most troubling mask is worn by U’s Public Enemy No. 1, a sharp-fanged, dark-maned, double-horned Beast also referred to as the Dragon (voiced by Takeru Satoh). Having left a trail of digital destruction in his wake, the Beast is being hunted online by vigilante forces, but it soon becomes clear that only Belle has the power to tame him. And so begins a very conscious homage to “Beauty and the Beast,” one that’s more Disney than Jean Cocteau, starting with our heroine’s choice of moniker. (She actually begins by calling herself “Bell” — “Suzu” means “bell” in Japanese — before her fans Frenchify it for her.) But Hosoda pushes his retelling of this fairy tale into significantly darker, wilder territory. At the heart of “Belle” is a harrowing story of abuse and violence, of sacrifice and rescue — one that at times seems ripped-from-the-headlines topical and elsewhere feels as trippy as a “Matrix” movie, complete with death-defying, skyscraper-shattering acrobatics.

Earnest, youthful journeys into otherworldly realms are nothing new for Hosoda, whose earlier animated features include “The Girl Who Leapt Through Time,” “Summer Wars” and the 2018 charmer “Mirai.” His storytelling may leave something to be desired in terms of elegance and economy, but my interest in “Belle,” though frequently dragged hither and yon, never flagged. Despite the unwieldy narrative complications, Hosoda achieves an adroit, ultimately instructive balance of kinesis and stillness. U’s virtual arena may tilt toward sensory overload, but the time Suzu spends there is matched — and ultimately overpowered — by an everyday reality she’s spent too long eluding.

Hosoda’s backdrops, with their soft colors and photorealist details, are always gorgeous enough to get lost in, but they also tell a deeper story of community and healing. An early shot of a frustrated Suzu walking alone across a narrow bridge in coldest winter is answered by later images of her with her friends, happily framed against a warm, sun-kissed landscape. The images dancing across our screens, cinematic or virtual, may be addictive and transfixing. But as “Belle” is wise enough to acknowledge, the world that enables and inspires those images will always be a deeper wellspring of magic.

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Beauty and the Beast

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With an enchanting cast, beautifully crafted songs, and a painterly eye for detail, Beauty and the Beast offers a faithful yet fresh retelling that honors its beloved source material.

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Once upon a time, before the acronyms VHS and DVD were commonplace, Disney would quaintly safeguard such animated classics as “ Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs ” and “ Pinocchio ” like priceless gems while benevolently re-issuing them every few years on the big screen before stashing them back in the studio vault.

But in the 1990s, with the advent of home entertainment, the studio started to consider new ways beyond revivals to cash in on the same beloved stories. First came Broadway productions, followed by direct-to-video sequels, TV series spinoffs and then, starting in 2010 with Tim Burton ’s effects-laden “ Alice in Wonderland ,” digitally-enhanced live-action renditions.

It was therefore 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 after “Cinderella” and “ The Jungle Book ” followed the rousing $1 billion worldwide box-office reception for “Alice in Wonderland.”

The bottom line: This gloriously old-fashioned musical with gee-whiz trappings is a dazzling beauty to behold (with enough Rococo gold decor to gild all of Trump’s properties) and is anything but a beastly re-interpretation of a fairy tale as old as time. Also welcome is the more inclusive display of love in its various forms, which go beyond the sweetly awkward courtship between brainy, brave and independent-minded bookworm Belle ( Emma Watson , much cherished for her gutsy portrayal of Hermione Granger in the eight 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 sensitive blue eyes serve him well amid all his CGI faux-fur trappings). 

As for that “exclusively gay moment” you have been hearing about? It appears near the conclusion when LeFou, a comic-relief character brought to life by Josh Gad (the voice of Olaf the snowman in “ Frozen ”) who clearly has an unrequited man-crush on his bulky and boorish buddy Gaston ( Luke Evans of “The Girl on the Train”), fleetingly dances with a male partner. That’s it. If your kids aren’t freaked out by Michael Keaton ’s coy in-the-closet Ken doll in “ Toy Story 3 ,” they will be fine here—especially considering the central relationship in this PG-rated fantasy basically promotes bestiality.

Still, this is a much denser—and longer, by a considerable 45 minutes—confection, one that doesn’t always go down as easily as the less-adorned yet lighter-than-air angel food cake that was the original. It’s true that my heart once again went pitty-pat during the ballroom waltz as Emma Thompson voicing Mrs. Potts honors her sublime teapot predecessor Angela Lansbury by warmly warbling the title theme. But I couldn’t help but feel that the more-is-more philosophy that lurks behind many of these remakes weighs down not just the story but some key performances. This “Beauty” is too often beset by blockbuster bloat. 

The familiar basics of the plot are the same as Maurice, Belle’s father ( Kevin Kline , whose sharp skills as a farceur are barely employed), is imprisoned by the Beast inside his forbidding castle for plucking a rose from his garden and Belle eventually offers to take her papa’s place. Meanwhile, the enchanted household objects conspire to cause the odd couple to fall for each other and break the spell that allows both them and their master to return to human form again. 

There are efforts by screenwriters by Stephen Chbosky (“ The Perks of Being a Wallflower ”) and Evan Spiliotopoulos (“The Huntsman: Winter’s War”) to provide emotional links between Belle and her Beast involving their mutual absent mothers that don’t add much substance. And, in an ineffectual attempt to embolden her feminist cred, Belle invents a primitive version of a washing machine. Such additions don’t hold a candelabra to tried and true sequences as when the Beast, in a wooing mood, reveals his vast library of books to Belle. One can only describe the reaction on Watson’s face as she takes in this leather-bound orgy of reading material as a biblio-gasm. 

That is not to say there isn’t much to admire, especially with director Bill Condon ’s dedication to injecting the lushness and scope of tune-filled spectacles of yore into the world of IMAX 3-D. His resume, which includes penning the adapted screenplay for “ Chicago ” and calling the shots behind the camera for “Dreamgirls” and the final two FX-propelled “Twilight” films, shows he knows his way around both musicals and special effects. Watson might be at her best right out of the gate while performing the song “ Belle ,” which begins with her bemoaning her provincial existence in a small town and ends with her singing on high amid lush green hilltops dotted with yellow wild flowers while channeling Maria in “The Sound of Music.” That the camera lingers upon the freckles on her pert nose is an added bonus.

Alas, once she is ensconced in the massive gothic castle, Watson is more reactive than pro-active as her slightness causes her to be swallowed up by the ornate scenery and upstaged by the chatty servants in the guise of furniture and knickknacks. I was a little nervous about how the voice cast including Ewan McGregor as the urbane French-accented candle man Lumiere and Ian McKellen as the chubby nervous mantel clock Cogsworth would fare. But they all do a bang-up job with the stand-out number “Be Our Guest,” the so-called “culinary cabaret” where plates, platters and utensils turn into performers in a Busby Berkeley-style spectacular. Condon wisely takes the choreography to the next level with nods to everything from “ West Side Story ” and “Les Miserables.” Meanwhile, Gad and Evans—both musical theater veterans—pull off the humorous pub number “Gaston” with playful aplomb.

Less successful are the action sequences where the Beast and Gaston battle it out “Hunchback of Notre Dame”-style among rooftop turrets, crumbling buttresses and gargoyles. But m ost disappointing are the not-so-memorable new songs that pop up in the second half whose melodies are once again written by composer Alan Menken but with lyrics by Tim Rice (“ The Lion King ”). They just cannot compete with the old favorites that never fail to tickle the ears with their irresistible wordplay supplied by the late great Howard Ashman . But with its racially diverse cast (at one point, I wished that Broadway dynamo Audra MacDonald as the wardrobe Madame Garderobe and the sprightly Stanley Tucci as her harpsichord hubby Maestro Cadenza could have done their own duet) and wink at same-sex flirtation, this “Beauty” presents a far more inclusive view of the world. One that is awash with a sense of hope and connection that we desperately need right now. If you desire an entertaining escape from reality right about now, be my guest.

Susan Wloszczyna

Susan Wloszczyna spent much of her nearly thirty years at USA TODAY as a senior entertainment reporter. Now unchained from the grind of daily journalism, she is ready to view the world of movies with fresh eyes.

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Beauty and the Beast (2017)

Rated PG for some action violence, peril and frightening images.

129 minutes

Emma Watson as Belle

Dan Stevens as Beast / Prince Adam

Luke Evans as Gaston

Ewan McGregor as Lumiere

Ian McKellen as Cogsworth

Emma Thompson as Mrs. Potts

Josh Gad as LeFou

Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Plumette

Stanley Tucci as Cadenza

Kevin Kline as Maurice

Hattie Morahan as Agathe

Audra McDonald as Wardrobe

• Bill Condon
• Stephen Chbosky
• Evan Spiliotopoulos

Cinematographer

• Tobias A. Schliessler
• Virginia Katz
• Alan Menken

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Belle and the Beast: A Christian Romance

Dove review.

Take the fairytale of “Beauty and the Beast” and put the basic story line into a modern day setting, and you have “Belle and the Beast”. Although the “Beast” is not a monster to look at but a man who takes his anger out on everyone around him by being a bully and rude. Then along comes Belle, who is patient and kind, to help this man see a new side to his life. Setting this tale in today’s world might help those who may relate to some of the same problems. “Belle and the Beast” receives the Dove Seal of Approval.

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Man smashes box.

Couple Kiss.

Man tells a lie; man is rude and a bully.

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Film Review: ‘Beauty and the Beast’

Disney's live-action remake of its 1991 animated classic, starring Emma Watson as a pitch-perfect Belle, is a sometimes entrancing, sometimes awkward mixture of re-creation and reimagining.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

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You could say that the notion of turning beloved stories and characters into brands was invented by Walt Disney. He built his empire on the image of Mickey Mouse (who made his debut in 1928), but Disney really patented the brand concept in 1955, with the launch of Disneyland, where kids could see old familiar characters — Mickey! Snow White! — in a completely different context, which made them new. Twenty-three years ago, the Broadway version of “ Beauty and the Beast ” (followed three years later by the Broadway version of “The Lion King”) introduced a different form of re-branding: the stage-musical-based-on-an-animated-feature. Now the studio is introducing a cinematic cousin to that form with the deluxe new movie version of “Beauty and the Beast,” a $160 million live-action re-imagining of the 1991 Disney animated classic. It’s a lovingly crafted movie, and in many ways a good one, but before that it’s an enraptured piece of old-is-new nostalgia.

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There’s a lot riding on “Beauty and the Beast.” Given its sheer novelty value (the live-action “Cinderella” released by Disney in 2015 wasn’t really cued to the 1950 cartoon version), the picture seems destined to score decisively at the box office. But the larger question hanging over it is: How major — how paradigm-shifting — can this new form be? Is it a fad or a revolution? Disney already has a live-action “Lion King” in the works, but it remains to be seen whether transforming animated features into dramas with sets and actors can be an inspired, or essential, format for the future.

Popular on Variety

Going into “Beauty and the Beast,” the sheer curiosity factor exerts a uniquely intense lure. Is the movie as transporting and witty a romantic fantasy as the animated original? Does it fall crucially short? Or is it in some ways better? The answer, at different points in the film, is yes to all three, but the bottom line is this: The new “Beauty and the Beast” is a touching, eminently watchable, at times slightly awkward experience that justifies its existence yet never totally convinces you it’s a movie the world was waiting for.

A good animated fairy tale is, of course, more than just a movie — it’s a whole universe. The form was invented by Disney eighty years ago, with “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” (1937), a film I still think has never been surpassed, and when you watch something as transporting as “Snow White” — or “Bambi,” or “Toy Story,” or “Beauty and the Beast” — every gesture and background and choreographed flourish, from the facial expressions to the drip-drop of water, flows together with a poetic unity. That’s the catchy miracle of great animation.

When you watch the new “Beauty and the Beast,” you’re in a prosaic universe of dark and stormy sets, one that looks a lot like other (stagy) films you’ve seen. The visual design, especially in the Beast’s majestic curlicued castle, is gentrified gothic — Tim Burton de-quirked. At the beginning, when Belle (Emma Watson) walks out of her house and wanders through the village singing “Belle,” that lovely lyrical meet-the-day ode that mingles optimism with a yearning for something more, the shots and beats are all in place, the spirit is there, you can see within 15 seconds that Emma Watson has the perfect perky soulfulness to bring your dream of Belle to life — and still, the number feels like something out of one of those overly bustling big-screen musicals from the late ’60s that helped to bury the studio system. It’s not that the director, Bill Condon (“Dreamgirls,” “The Twilight Saga”), does anything too clunky or square. It’s that the material loses its slapstick spryness when it’s not animated. The sequence isn’t bad, it’s just…standard.

That’s true of most of the first part of the movie, right up until the point when Belle rescues her kindly inventor father, Maurice (Kevin Kline), from the Beast’s castle — where he’s being held prisoner for having assaulted a flower — by trading places with him. Belle, a wistful bookworm, is the odd girl out in her village, and she has already brushed off several encounters with Gaston (Luke Evans), the duplicitous hunk who became a new Disney archetype (in “Frozen,” etc.): the handsome, big-chinned, icky monomaniacal two-faced suitor. On first meeting, however, the Beast seems nearly as dark. He’s a prince who was cursed and turned into a monster for having no love in him, and the best thing about the movie — as well as its biggest divergence from the animated version — is that he’s a strikingly downbeat character, a petulant and morose romantic trapped in a body that makes him feel nothing less than doomed.

He’s played by Dan Stevens, a British actor who out of makeup looks like a bland version of Ryan Gosling, but the makeup and effects artists have done an extraordinary job of transforming him into a hairy hulking figure with ram horns, the face of a saddened lion having an existential meltdown, and the voice of Darth Vader channeling Hugh Grant. Visually, the characterization makes a nod to the scowling-eyed Beast from Jean Cocteau’s immortal “Beauty and the Beast” (1946), but he also comes off as a kind of royal version of the Elephant Man: a melancholy freak trapped in solitude. I loved that for a good long while, he’s a bit of a hard-ass, a man-creature who doesn’t dare to think that Belle could love him. But then, under her gaze, he begins to soften, and his transformation is touching in a more adult way than it was in the animated version. The romance there was benign; here, it’s alive with forlorn longing.

Which is to say, the new “Beauty and the Beast” is not as kid-friendly a movie. It tries to be in certain sequences, notably those featuring Lumière the candelabra (voiced by Ewan McGregor), Cogsworth the pendulum clock (Ian McKellen), and Garderobe the wardrobe (Audra McDonald) — all of whom are basically tactile, live-action animated characters. The “Be Our Guest” musical number scrupulously revives the dancing-plate surreal exuberance of the original, but there the frenetic nuttiness was exquisite. Here it tips between exhilarating and exhausting, because you can feel the special-effects heavy lifting that went into it.

I keep comparing “Beauty and the Beast” to the animated version, which raises a question: Is that what we’re supposed to be doing? Or should the film simply stand on its own? The movie wants to have it both ways, but then, that’s the contradictory metaphysic of reboot culture: We’re drawn in to see the old thing…but we want it to be new. The live-action “Beauty and the Beast” is different enough, and certainly, if you’ve never experienced the cartoon, it’s strong enough to stand on its own. (Josh Gad, incidentally, plays Gaston’s worshipful stooge Le Fou as maximally silly and fawning, but I must have missed the memo where that spells “gay.”) Yet it’s not really that simple, is it? The larger fantasy promoted by a movie like this one is that we’ll somehow see an animated feature “come to life.” And that may be a dream of re-branding — shared by studio and audience alike — that carries an element of creative folly. Animation, at its greatest, is already a glorious imitation of life. It’s not clear that audiences need an imitation of the imitation.

Reviewed at Lincoln Square, New York, March 2, 2017. MPAA Rating: PG. Running time: 129 MIN.

• Production: A Walt Disney Studios release of a Walt Disney Pictures, Mandeville Films production. Producers: David Hoberman, Todd Liebmerman. Executive producers: Don Hahn, Tomas Schumacher, Jeffrey Silver.
• Crew: Director: Bill Condon. Screenplay: Stephen Chbosky, Evan Spiliotopoulos. Camera (color, widescreen): Tobias A. Schliessler. Editor: Virginia Katz.
• With: Emma Watson, Dan Stevens, Luke Evans, Kevin Kline, Josh Gad, Ewan McGregor, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Audra McDonald, Ian McKellen, Emma Thompson, Stanley Tucci.

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Beauty and the beast.

• Common Sense Says
• Parents Say 91 Reviews
• Kids Say 166 Reviews

Common Sense Media Review

Fantastic but scarier remake of the "tale as old as time."

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Beauty and the Beast is Disney's live-action remake of the classic 1991 animated musical, with Emma Watson as book-loving, independent Belle and Dan Stevens as the Beast. Although the movie will appeal to even very young viewers, especially those familiar with the original, the…

Why Age 8+?

Scary, intense scenes involving snarling, hungry wolves. They attack Maurice aft

Flirting, dancing (both opposite-sex and same-sex couples), and a couple of kiss

Insults include "idiot," "fool," "crazy," "delusional," "peculiar," "hag," etc.

Nothing in the film itself, but Disney has plenty of merchandising tie-ins, from

Villagers drink at their local tavern.

Any Positive Content?

It's important to see beneath the surface (looks, social class, etc.) to really

Belle is intelligent, strong-willed, curious, and kind. She's a loving daughter

Kids familiar with the animated version will learn about adaptations and the imp

Violence & Scariness

Scary, intense scenes involving snarling, hungry wolves. They attack Maurice after a tree suddenly falls in front of his wagon in a dark, spooky forest, and they go after Belle when she leaves the castle (the Beast fights them and is left wounded and bleeding). The Beast growls/roars several times. Belle takes a snowball to the face. ( Spoiler alert !) Flashbacks reveal that the prince's and Belle's mothers both died of sickness; their children are separated from them in both cases (sad/upsetting). Gaston yells at Maurice, threatens him, punches him, and ties him to a tree and leaves him there. Gaston has Maurice and Belle arrested and violently incites mob violence (pitchforks, torches, battering rams, etc.) and uses a gun to shoot the Beast. Villagers and castle servants fight. One character plummets to their death as the castle crumbles.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Flirting, dancing (both opposite-sex and same-sex couples), and a couple of kisses. Some dresses show a little cleavage.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Insults include "idiot," "fool," "crazy," "delusional," "peculiar," "hag," etc. Also "shut up" and a reference to "eternal damnation."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Nothing in the film itself, but Disney has plenty of merchandising tie-ins, from apparel and accessories to toys.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Positive Messages

It's important to see beneath the surface (looks, social class, etc.) to really know who people are. The Beast's curse illustrates the importance of generosity of spirit rather than greed and shows the value of humility. Belle's love of books demonstrates the transformative power of reading/education, and her interest in teaching a girl to read shows that girls should be every bit as educated as boys. Also, you can't just stand by when someone treats someone else poorly; you should act. Freedom is essential to true happiness. Themes also include compassion, empathy, and curiosity.

Positive Role Models

Belle is intelligent, strong-willed, curious, and kind. She's a loving daughter who gives up her freedom in exchange for her father's. Maurice is doting and sweet. The Beast learns to love because of his relationship with Belle, and Belle sees beyond his rough exterior to his gentler soul, buried beneath his demanding, beastly exterior. The castle servants work together to help Belle see beyond the Beast's scarier aspects. Several characters redeem themselves. Gaston is selfish, shallow, and cruel, but he's clearly intended to be a villain/poor example. The supporting cast is very diverse.

Educational Value

Kids familiar with the animated version will learn about adaptations and the impact of live-action stories vs. animated ones. They'll also become familiar with one of the most universal fairy tales in Western literature and learn lessons about compassion and humility.

Parents need to know that Beauty and the Beast is Disney's live-action remake of the classic 1991 animated musical , with Emma Watson as book-loving, independent Belle and Dan Stevens as the Beast. Although the movie will appeal to even very young viewers, especially those familiar with the original, the remake's violent sequences can be very intense, with a few jump-worthy and upsetting moments (several involving snarling wolves, others guns) that leave characters bloodied, injured, and, in one case, dead. As always, the story encourages viewers to look beyond the superficial and to be compassionate, curious, humble, and generous. Director Bill Condon took care to make sure that this version had diverse supporting characters, including a gay LeFou ( Josh Gad ) -- Gaston's sidekick, who briefly dances with a man -- and people of color not represented in the animated version. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Parent and Kid Reviews

• Parents say (91)
• Kids say (166)

Based on 91 parent reviews

Good movie: can be scary but nothing your six year old won't be able to handle.

Do not listen to some of these parents, what's the story.

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST opens with a prologue: A greedy, careless, party-loving French prince ( Dan Stevens ) refuses to help an old woman seeking shelter, so she transforms into an enchantress and places a curse on him. It turns him into an ugly beast and his castle's attendants into household objects until he can find someone to love him despite his looks. Years later, Belle ( Emma Watson ), a smart, book-loving girl living in the village near the castle dreams of something more than her daily routine. Vain war hero Gaston ( Luke Evans ) has his sights set on Belle for a wife, but she's not interested. After Belle's father, Maurice ( Kevin Kline ), ends up imprisoned in the enchanted castle, she follows him and offers herself up as a prisoner in exchange for his freedom. Meanwhile, the Beast's household staff -- led by candelabra Lumiere ( Ewan McGregor ), clock Cogsworth ( Ian McKellen ), and teakettle Mrs. Potts ( Emma Thompson ) -- conspire to help Belle see their beastly master as something more ... and possibly break the spell.

Is It Any Good?

Watson is an ideal Belle in this wonderful remake that's at once nostalgic and new, bringing to life the musical both for kids and life-long adult fans. Her Belle is relatable and sympathetic, with her curious eyes and aura of clever bookishness and strong-willed personality (Watson was also Hermione Granger, after all!). It turns out Watson can sing well, too; she's no rival to six-time Tony-winning co-star Audra McDonald , who plays Madame Garderobe, but her voice is clear and crisp and full of the longing and wanderlust that Belle conveys so beautifully in Alan Menken's songs. Stevens does a fine job with the Beast, playing up the character's frustration, anger, underlying sadness -- and eventual love -- in his voice and gestures.

But we all know that Beauty and the Beast is just as much about the supporting characters as it is the central couple, and director Bill Condon 's ensemble doesn't disappoint. Kline's Maurice is even funnier than his bumbling animated counterpart, and McGregor and McKellen are hilarious as odd-couple duo Lumiere and Cogsworth. Thompson is comforting as Mrs. Potts, and her boy Chip is ever as lovable. And then there's Evans as narcissistic Gaston, who's so full of himself that he can't fathom why Belle won't agree to be his bride, and the amazing Josh Gad , who steals the show as Gaston's adoring (and smitten) sidekick LeFou. Menken's original songs are rendered with appropriate spectacle, particularly "Be Our Guest," but the new ones are decidedly bittersweet, underscoring the sadness both Belle and Beast feel about their situations. The gorgeous costumes and extraordinary set design add to the movie's overall delight, but it's the performances that stand out in this memorable musical remake.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about how the live-action Beauty and the Beast compares to the original animated version. Which differences do you like most? Which did you like least?

Even if you were expecting them, how did the movie's scary scenes make you feel? How much scary stuff can young kids handle?

How do the characters demonstrate compassion , curiosity , humility , and empathy ? Why are those important character strengths ?

How does Belle compare to other Disney princesses? Is she curious ? Do you consider her a role model ?

What makes Gaston's conceited, self-centered nature funny? Is he a caricature of the stereotypical leading man? Do your feelings about him change over the course of the story? Why?

Movie Details

• In theaters : March 17, 2017
• On DVD or streaming : June 6, 2017
• Cast : Emma Watson , Dan Stevens , Luke Evans , Josh Gad
• Director : Bill Condon
• Inclusion Information : Gay directors, Gay actors, Middle Eastern/North African actors
• Studio : Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
• Genre : Family and Kids
• Topics : Magic and Fantasy , Fairy Tales , Great Girl Role Models , Music and Sing-Along
• Character Strengths : Compassion , Curiosity , Empathy , Humility
• Run time : 129 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG
• MPAA explanation : some action violence, peril and frightening images
• Award : Common Sense Selection
• Last updated : May 26, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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The Princess Bride

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• Cast & crew
• User reviews

Beauty and the Beast

A selfish Prince is cursed to become a monster for the rest of his life, unless he learns to fall in love with a beautiful young woman he keeps prisoner. A selfish Prince is cursed to become a monster for the rest of his life, unless he learns to fall in love with a beautiful young woman he keeps prisoner. A selfish Prince is cursed to become a monster for the rest of his life, unless he learns to fall in love with a beautiful young woman he keeps prisoner.

• Bill Condon
• Stephen Chbosky
• Evan Spiliotopoulos
• Linda Woolverton
• Emma Watson
• Dan Stevens
• 1.2K User reviews
• 532 Critic reviews
• 65 Metascore
• 16 wins & 81 nominations total

Top cast 99+

• Jean the Potter

• Père Robert

• Madame Garderobe

• Maestro Cadenza

• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

More like this

Did you know

• Trivia Ryan Gosling was offered the role of the Beast but turned it down to appear in La La Land (2016) instead. Emma Watson was offered the lead role in that movie but turned it down to star in this one. La La Land won several Oscars, including Best Actress for Emma Stone, who accepted the role Watson passed on.
• Goofs When Belle ascends the spiral staircase it is initially a clockwise spiral, yet when she emerges at the top it is the reverse.

Clothilde : Henri? Henri!

Cogsworth : [sees his wife] Oh, dear.

Clothilde : I've been so lonely!

Cogsworth : [to himself] Turn back into a clock... Turn back into a clock.

• Crazy credits The Walt Disney Pictures logo features the Prince's castle (with Villeneuve village in the background) in the evening before his masquerade party starts. A rosebush appears near the castle and the Enchantress picks a rose from it, leading into the opening.
• Alternate versions The film's IMAX release presented the film open-matte, at an aspect ratio of 1.90:1, meaning there was more picture information visible in the top and bottom of the frame than in normal theaters and on home video.
• Connections Featured in Honest Trailers: The Jungle Book (2016) (2016)
• Soundtracks Main Title: Prologue Written by Alan Menken

User reviews 1.2K

• Oct 2, 2017
• How long is Beauty and the Beast? Powered by Alexa
• Is this version a musical like the animated film?
• How different is this version compared to the animated counterpart it's based on?
• March 17, 2017 (United States)
• United States
• Official Site
• La bella y la bestia
• Shepperton Studios, Shepperton, Surrey, England, UK (Studio)
• Walt Disney Pictures
• Mandeville Films
• Walt Disney Studios
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $160,000,000 (estimated)
• $504,481,165
• $174,750,616
• Mar 19, 2017
• $1,266,115,964

Technical specs

• Runtime 2 hours 9 minutes
• Dolby Digital
• Dolby Surround 7.1
• Dolby Atmos

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I just watched Belle on first screening and here’s my opinion.

I just finished watching Belle for it’s first screening and I can honestly and whole heartedly say that it was amazing, 10/10 would recommend for anyone whose a fan of “anime” movies. It was like a modern day Beauty and the Beast with a fun story and good characters. The animation and art was also really amazing. Especially seeing it on a huge movie screen. I’ll say it again, please see it while it’s in theaters!

It’s lighthearted and funny while also tackling the subjects of losing family members and abusive relationships. While also being a traditional love story with a modern technological twist. Throughout the journey it’s a story of growth for the main character Suzu as she learns to sing again and come out of her shell.

The fantasy world of “U” and the slow budding love between the two main characters’ AS chars is very intriguing. The mystery of who he is while the fascination of if they will interact when they first meet was truly heart warming.

The voice acting for the movie was also sublime! Each character felt fully fleshed out with voices that suited them perfectly. I also enjoy how they didn’t swap out VAs between the irl Suzu and Dragon and their AS chars. But that’s besides the point. The amount of care and time and love they put into this movie is what truly speaks. It’s a classic tale made new in the modern age that we live in. Combined with the ever present remembrance of mental growth along with her friends and family.

I would wholeheartedly recommend this to anyone new to the anime movie franchise or even a veteran watcher. Not many movies have made me laugh and cry but this is the exception. I urge anyone with free time on their hands this weekend to seek out this one!

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The 32 greatest Disney movie moments

These are the Disney moments that take us wonder by wonder

Since the release of its 1937 feature film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Disney has been synonymous with timeless storytelling and quality craftsmanship. While it’s true that not everything ever made from the studio are seismic hits, there’s no dispute that Disney is a name known worldwide. It’s for good reason. Because for many years, Disney has made movies that have brought families together. Reader, reader of the screen: What Disney movie moments are the fairest to be seen?

Originally sourcing its movies from Grimm fairy tales and European folklore, Disney has since expanded its vast kingdom to tell (and re-tell) stories from all realms, from mythologies and oral histories to even comic books. In celebration of the studio’s own continued story, these are the 32 greatest Disney movie moments of all time. (A quick word: We’re excluding movies from Pixar , because that’s a category all on its own.)

32. Mulan Takes Her Father’s Place (Mulan)

Simply reading the premise of Disney’s Mulan, loosely based on the Chinese folk heroine, is enough to stir feelings through its themes of family, duty, and honor. But to actually see the moment Mulan (voiced by Ming-Na Wen) takes her father’s place in the army and disguises herself as a man is something else. Set against a dramatic thunderstorm, Mulan does what no Disney princess before her had ever done – take up arms – and the resulting scene is an exquisite portrait of heroism and bravery, all coming from love for the people who matter most.

31. The Rocketeer Blasts Off (The Rocketeer)

Before The Avengers assembled under Disney’s vast empire, it had the Rocketeer, an original superhero from creator Dave Stevens. In Joe Johnston’s 1991 film version of Stevens’ comic, The Rocketeer (played by Billy Campbell) takes off into the skies for the first time to rescue a pilot in an air show that’s gone wrong. While the visual effects are comparatively primitive to what’s seen in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the entire sequence is still a hoot, being an affectionate and nostalgic throwback to the Golden Age of superheroes.

30. Hawaiian Roller Coaster Ride (Lilo & Stitch)

There’s no better cure for a sour face than a couple of boards and some choice waves. In one of Disney’s few non-musical animated hits Lilo & Stitch, dejected sisters Nani and Lilo have run out of time for Nani to find a job and thus protect Lilo from being taken away into the foster system. As the sun sets, the sisters – plus hunky David, and rabid pet alien Stitch – opt to forget their troubles and hang ten, allowing every wave to take them from the troubles that await on land. Powered by the bubbly platinum-hit song “Hawaiian Roller Coaster Ride,” this unforgettable scene shows what it means to surf with the ocean rather than to swim against the current.

29. Hellfire (The Hunchback of Notre Dame)

Any Disney movie musical is sure to have a killer “villain” song. But Frollo’s song “Hellfire” is like no other. Rooted in the hypocrisy of pious men and inner conflict found in all who are devout in their chosen dogmas, “Hellfire” unveils the true and remarkably human motivations of the villainous Judge Claude Follo (Tony Jay). Haunted by fiery spirits and looming hooded clergy, Frollo sings of his regretful lust for beautiful Esmeralda (voiced by Demi Moore), revealing a man who isn’t hellbent on amassing cosmic powers or dominion over kingdoms. Instead, he’s just a man who wants a woman. And because he can’t have her, then no one can. How frightening, and for many people, how tragically familiar.

28. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (Fantasia)

Truly, almost all of Fantasia qualifies as a great moment for Disney. While classical music was traditionally popular with early 20th century animation, Fantasia was different in that it imagined a more serious tone unlike the slapstick comedy common in more conventional cartoons. But the centerpiece short of Fantasia is also the best and arguably most definitive of Disney’s storytelling magic. We’re talking, of course, about “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” where Mickey Mouse is tasked with a chore by his wizard master Yen Sid and his plan to shortcut the work creates a, ahem, flood of problems. It’s not only beautiful to watch, it’s also funny, cute, and enlightening, with its chief lesson – there’s no substitute for hard work – resonating when Mickey silently and sullenly finally does what he was told to do.

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27. Swinging Through the Trees (Tarzan)

The Disney Renaissance is full of technically dazzling films that made us all go, “You can do that in a cartoon ?” In 1999, Disney released Tarzan, based on the classic Edgar Rice Burroughs story with impossibly great music from Phil Collins. Closing off its first act that shows how a baby boy grows up into a man raised by apes, an adult Tarzan swings from vine to vine and “surfs” through the trees high above in an astonishing feat of animated filmmaking. It’s barely 20 seconds long, but it’s still a show-stopper as the culmination of a century’s worth of industry evolution and a tiny bit of computer effects to foreshadow the coming future of the new century.

26. Heigh Ho! (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs)

Let me guess: You have it stuck in your head now. The introduction of the titular Seven Dwarfs who come to support the beautiful Snow White are memorably introduced inside a jewel mine, picking and clawing out priceless jewels and singing about it with a catchy jingle. What’s most important is how the Seven Dwarfs are individually introduced, not with lyrics that call attention to themselves but simply how they act and behave all throughout. (Dopey, natch, is the heart and soul of the entire thing.) For many, “Heigh Ho!” is how people learned to whistle. 

25. Goodbye, Baymax (Big Hero 6)

Originating as a mighty obscure Marvel Comics title, Big Hero 6 shows how some of that precious Disney touch can create some real magic. In Big Hero 6, teen genius Hiro honors his late brother Tadashi by outfitting his creation, a huggable medical robot assistant named Baymax (voiced by Scott Adsit), into a butt-kicking superhero. But at the end of the movie, Baymax offers to sacrifice himself to save Hiro, with his signature question – “Are you satisfied with your care?” – taking on deeper meaning. Credit to Scott Adsit for a remarkably human voiceover performance.

24. The Hair Flip (The Little Mermaid)

At the dawn of Disney’s rebirth period came The Little Mermaid, setting a new standard of quality for Disney movies. While The Little Mermaid is chock full of amazing moments under the sea – including an all-time great villain song “Poor Unfortunate Souls” – there’s one eight-second bit that has fostered a lifetime of imagination. When a changed Ariel (with two legs) swims to the surface for the first time, she flips her hair back, the glistening of the splashing water indistinguishable from the magic that has totally altered her body. Between the scene’s realistic lighting and overall visual majesty, what you have is a moment that encapsulates how much beauty and magic are inextricably linked.

23. Carrying the Banner (Newsies)

The opening number of Disney’s pro-union musical Newsies is the platonic ideal for all cinematic musicals. It not only sets the expectations for all of its musical stylings – in this case, jazzy ragtime of the late 1890s – it also tells a story about the daily life of overworked orphans struggling every day under the oppressive thumb of crony capitalism. It’s catchy, it’s lively, the choreography is legitimately impressive, and it never sounds the same for the whole five minutes. A major plus: It has a very young, pre-Batman Christian Bale flexing his talents as a future movie star.

22. Savages! (Pocahontas)

A thunderous war song underscored by the ways racial prejudice makes barbarians of us all, the “Savages” number in Disney’s Pocahontas lives up to the word “epic” even if the world isn’t at stake. While history rightfully asserts that European colonization has done more harm than good, as far as a Disney movie is concerned, Pocahontas boasts striking visual metaphors that unsubtly suggest how our tribalistic tendencies render us inhuman. Observe how the white settlers are lit red by their raging fire, all whilst singing about the inhuman “red” Indians – and how the Native Americans, painted blue in the pale moonlight, warn about the violence of pale men. We could all benefit from a little introspection.

21. Bette Midler Puts a Spell on You (Hocus Pocus)

When the spooky season comes along, there’s nothing better than boogying down with three Salem witches. Hocus Pocus is a Halloween classic for all the obvious reasons, but Bette Midler has ensured its timeless quality through her big musical number “I Put a Spell on You,” which actually illustrates her villainy in a clever way. Not only is Winnie eerily adaptable to modern settings, she doesn’t even feel the need to hide exactly what she’s doing: casting a spell over the people. It’s horrifying because the people don’t mind, so long as you know how to put on a good show.

20. A Walk in Central Park (Enchanted)

Before Disney developed a nasty habit of remaking all of its animated musicals into live-action movies, it satirized itself with that very idea with the 2007 hit musical Enchanted. Featuring Amy Adams and Patrick Dempsey, the movie affectionately pokes fun at Disney movie conventions, including spontaneous musical numbers with elaborate choreography. While “That’s How You Know” is a great song on its own, it gets a boost of entertainment from a flummoxed Robert (Dempsey), lost as to how everyone in Central Park knows how to sing in key and dance on cue.

19. Old Yeller Gets Rabies (Old Yeller)

Early Disney really had a thing for killing animals, didn’t it? As iconic as Bambi and The Lion King, Old Yeller is best remembered for the close friendship between teenage boy Travis (Tommy Kirk) and his dog, a Black Mouth Cur named Old Yeller, only for that friendship to end in painful tragedy. When Old Yeller develops rabies and becomes a hostile dog who horrifically snarls at the sight of any human, Travis included, it’s up to Travis to put him down. The movie is another example of Disney showing the ruthlessness of nature, and that even the best of bonds can be broken.

18. Talking About Bruno/Meeting Bruno (Encanto)

Family shame mixes with Colombian melodies in one of the most memorable and mesmerizing Disney numbers of the 2020s. In the 2021 film Encanto, Maribel (Stephanie Beatriz) learns more about her estranged uncle Bruno (John Leguizamo), a future-teller who is talked about only in hushed whispers. While the number, ludicrously catchy and groovy as it is, does an excellent job of setting Bruno up as another mystical Disney villain, the truth hits hard when Maribel actually meets him and discovers he’s just a man who wants to be part of his family. With its metaphors of mental illness and the ways families drown out their guilt with careless cruelty, Bruno ensures Encanto is more than just another run of the mill Disney movie musical.

17. Light Cycles (Tron)

In a strange and exceptionally rare instance of outdated visual effects looking better with age, there is the 1982 sci-fi epic Tron. Directed by Steven Lisberger and featuring then-cutting-edge CGI, Tron takes place inside a virtual world where video game developer Flynn (Jeff Bridges) is transported into an arcade game and must physically compete in games – including a deadly light cycle race. Simultaneously the most 1980s-looking sequence imaginable and still ahead of its time, Tron made us all wish we could get on light cycles ourselves and ride to victory – or doom.

16. When You Wish Upon a Star (Pinnochio)

Kicking off the Disney classic Pinnochio is the song that has quite literally defined Disney itself, functioning as the company’s signature theme motif for decades. At the start of Pinnochio, the credits are scored to colorful strings and an angelic choir before the deep voice of Cliff Edwards who sings to us: “When you wish upon a star/makes no difference who you are/anything your heart desires, will come to you.” It’s a sweet and sentimental idea that makes us want to believe that magic could be real, especially at times when we need to believe in it the most.

15. Bambi Survives (Bambi)

Bambi was and is one of Disney’s greatest movies for a reason. Aside from its stunning storybook design and animation, its themes of love, death, and the uncontrollable chaos of the outside world are universally instructive to viewers too young to actually grasp what it means to lose somebody. While the moment Bambi dies is iconic to the point of spawning endless parodies, it’s still an important moment for the Disney canon in demonstrating how children’s entertainment doesn’t have to be devoid of meaning.

14. Elsa Lets It Go (Frozen)

Sincere apologies to parents whose shell-shocked memories of Frozen fever we’ve just thawed out, but there’s no arguing the sheer impact that “Let It Go” had once upon a time. In the seismic 2013 Disney classic, Princess Elsa declares her individuality away from the suffocating glares of Arendelle by going to where they could never, ever bother her. Besides the fact that “Let It Go” is a stone cold karaoke banger, Elsa’s signature number is a true spectacle to behold, with gorgeous imagery centered around the instantaneous rise of Elsa’s private castle of ice.

13. A Whole New World (Aladdin)

Don’t you dare close your eyes. One of the most unstoppable duet songs ever from Disney maestro Alan Menken, Jasmine (whose singing voice belongs to the incomparable Lea Salonga) and Aladdin’s breathtaking magic carpet ride around the world is a soaring sequence that just feels like the way falling in love with someone feels. It feels like flying, and there’s nothing else like it on Earth. With its sweeping lyricism and utterly romantic atmosphere, this scene takes you over, sideways, and under — to a dazzling new place you never knew.

12. Next Stop: Neverland (Peter Pan)

See enough Disney movies and you’ll begin to spot the same recurring ideas: orphaned animals, true love’s kiss, and of course, the magic of flying. In Peter Pan, Wendy and the kids are sprinkled with fairy dust by Peter Pan and take on the ability to fly. All they need to do is think happy thoughts. (Now wouldn’t that be nice for the rest of us?) While the scene may not impress modern audiences who are used to more technically sophisticated sequences, the scene is pure, quintessential Disney magic that is still timeless after all this time.

11. A Pirate’s Arrival (Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl)

There has simply never been another character like Captain Jack Sparrow, before or since. Played by Johnny Depp, this sun-kissed, rum-drunk rock star buccaneer makes his first appearance in the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie fully-formed, wearing in his baggy eyes a lifetime of adventures. While Captain Jack is a sorrowful case of a good thing getting spoiled, there is still something ineffable in his debut appearance. May we all learn to disembark sinking ships with such nonchalance.

10. The “Bear” Necessities (The Jungle Book)

You don’t get “Hakuna Matata” without learning about the bare necessities. In The Jungle Book, Mowlgi learns from the effortlessly chill Baloo (voiced by Phil Harris) the secret to living a full life: by having little complications in it. Though Baloo is literally teaching Mowgli how to survive off of Earth’s natural offerings, the song has a bigger meaning in instructing younger viewers how to have a more zen-like approach to modern living. Before Marie Kondo, before minimalist trends on TikTok, there was a dancing big bear who showed us how to look under the rocks and glance at the fancy ants.

9. Spaghetti Dinner for Two (Lady and the Tramp)

It’s so iconic and ubiquitous, but it still hasn’t lost its power. In the unforgettable dinner at Tony’s, Tramp takes Lady out for a candlelit Italian dinner, where they share an accidental smooch over spaghetti. Keep in mind the scene is entirely animated in the old school hand-drawn Disney style; from the dogs’ expressive, cherubic faces to the intimate warmth of a back alley dinner, everything about this moment just feels alive, pulsing with the thrill of budding romance.

8. A Tale as Old as Time (Beauty and the Beast)

Putting aside any stray vibes of Stockholm syndrome, the ballroom scene between beautiful Belle and the beastly, well, Beast is still a Disney moment for the ages. As “Beauty and the Beast” is sung by the incomparable Angela Lansbury, Belle and Beast spin and twirl in an ornate golden ballroom, which is rendered by primitive, but no less impressive CGI. As a mixture of Diseny’s traditional animation and cutting-edge new disciplines, Beauty and the Beast shows that even tales as old as time can still find new ways to be told.

7. Colors of the Wind (Pocahontas)

Arguably one of the most beautiful Disney musical numbers of all time, “Colors of the Wind” – sung by Judy Kuhn, as the singing voice of Pocahontas – tells multiple stories all at once. While primarily a lecture about nature preservation from Pocahontas’ point-of-view to John Smith, who is but a visitor to her homeland, the song slowly expands on a macro-scale to feel like a passionate plea from all to think more carefully about our relationship to this ancient and beautiful Earth. As Pocahontas puts it in the song: You can own the Earth, and still all you’ll own is Earth until you actually understand what it means to be one with it.

6. A Spoonful of Sugar (Mary Poppins)

Just because you have to do something doesn’t mean you can’t have a little fun along the way. In Mary Poppins, the impossibly beautiful Julie Andrews instructs the two children she babysits to take responsibility and clean their room. But she shows them how to do it with a smile, for a spoonful of sugar really helps the medicine go down. Props to Andrews for making this scene as wonderful as it is, whose upbeat energy perfectly matches the uptempo sound.

5. A Fairy Godmother’s Makeover (Cinderella)

It’s a trope that has come to define Disney’s storybook fantasies, and it still works because it’s still so powerful to believe in. In Cinderella, the poor orphaned Disney princess laments missing out on the ball, only for her fairy godmother to come to a last-minute rescue. Not only is the moment Cinderella “puts on” her dress still a feat of technical filmmaking, but everything about screams timeless elegance. Plus, who wouldn’t want to ride into the hottest part of the year in a tricked-out pumpkin ride? It’s a moment that defines “belle of the ball.”

4. Slaying the Dragon (Sleeping Beauty)

To anyone who thinks that old Disney movies are stuffy and boring and lacking action, think again. Prince Philip’s daring confrontation against Maleficent – in her fearsome form as a fire-breathing dragon – is still an exciting climactic match-up, and deeply formative for all RPGs and Soulsborne boss battles. Powered by George Bruns’ score and illuminated by swirling fires and thorny black branches, the climax of Sleeping Beauty is still one of the greatest ever.

3. True Love’s Kiss (Snow White)

Here’s something to remember for pub trivia: The first instance of “true love’s kiss” in a Disney movie was 1938’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. While a handful of other Disney princesses get smooched to break whatever curse ails them, Snow White was the first, with her kiss from Prince Charming ending the Wicked Queen’s spell. Beautifully animated for the screen through rotoscope technique, this moment from Snow White has undeniably resonated across generations. 

2. “And Then… I Got In” (Tron: Legacy)

Epic and ominous all at once, the opening of Tron: Legacy (the 2010 sequel to the 1982 original Tron) is awe-inspiring as it is spine-chilling. It’s not scary, but suggestive of worlds within worlds, of realities man can create and still be totally ignorant to its existence. Beyond that, the arresting use of contrasting colors – pitch black and neon pale blue – showed how anything old can be new again, and how “retro” is a fluid concept ready for redefinition. We haven’t even touched on Jeff Bridges’ slick narration that economically breaks down the story of the original Tron, nor the iconic soundtrack of Daft Punk as they effectively inspired the rebirth of synthwave. There’s no introduction to a Disney movie quite like Tron: Legacy, and that’s because it stands alone.

1. The Circle of Life (The Lion King)

The Lion King is such a towering masterwork of the Disney library, you could write out a whole list of great moments from just the one movie alone. But narrowing things down to just one, there’s no debate over the movie’s prologue and epilogue, which is beautifully and simply put as “The Circle of Life.” Kicking off the movie on an arresting high note – with Zulu vocals sung by Lebo M – the sequence is a stunning blend of animation and wildlife documentary, as Africa’s kingdom of animals (more or less) behave exactly as they do in the wild. Punctuated by the motif of a rising sun, which casts a beautiful golden layer of sheen on all it touches, the sequence lives up to the word “majestic.” How fitting, for the birth of a new king.

Eric Francisco is a freelance entertainment journalist and graduate of Rutgers University. If a movie or TV show has superheroes, spaceships, kung fu, or John Cena, he's your guy to make sense of it. A former senior writer at Inverse, his byline has also appeared at Vulture, The Daily Beast, Observer, and The Mary Sue. You can find him screaming at Devils hockey games or dodging enemy fire in Call of Duty: Warzone.

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