The Modern Retelling of Beauty and the Beast

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The first hour of this movie is basically a modern retelling of Beauty and the Beast. The main protagonist, Suzu, has a traumatic upbringing with not many friends or family to lean upon for help. To cope with her loneliness, she uses her virtual alter ego, Belle, in the movie's equivalent of the internet, to sing and become an ideal version of herself. After becoming a viral sensation, she gains more confidence in herself in school and everyday life. Just as things are finally turning around for Suzu, she encounters a beast/minotaur-like avatar called "Dragon". Suzu feels compelled to help this beast despite everyone on the internet becoming an echo chamber of hatred towards Dragon. However, Dragon does not want her sympathy nor her help. Will Suzu be able to stop the internet pitchforks from symbolically killing Dragon? Who is behind his avatar?

My Opinion:

This movie is a quite a mixed bag. There are some gorgeous set pieces that just makes you want to use as your desktop wallpaper. The clever use of CG to create this futuristic virtual world is beautiful to look at. Howeversome scenes look like they're rotoscoped and reused like 8 times. Maybe this was to save on budget? The songs she sings didn't grab me at first but towards the end I started to love them. The music is phenomenal. The entire soundtrack is on Spotify, I highly recommend people to check that out.

Then there is the extremely convoluted story of a girl trying to help a stranger over the internet while overcoming her own shortcomings. There is potential of a good movie here, but it is filled with plot holes and questionable decisions that drag the movie down a few pegs. The movie introduces relationships and more side characters but never expands upon them. What happened with Suzu's relationships with her father? Why was the love interest between Shinobu and Suzu completely dropped? Why is the internet police just doxing people without any repercussions? There is a decent movie by the halfway mark but after that, the movie just goes completely off the rails into fantasy.

Conclusion:

Belle is an ambitious movie that gets your foot in the door with its gorgeous visuals, excellent music, but by end of the experience it does not live up to the expectations you expect out of a Mamoru Hosoda movie. The Girl Who Lept Through Time, Wolf Children and even Summer Wars is a better time than this below average movie. Thankfully the music and visuals were stunning because the story is a completely failure.