Forum - View topicREVIEW: Belle
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SenpaiDuckie
ANN Community Manager
 Posts: 474 Location: PH |
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Just deleted an irrelevant post (meaning, not connected to the topic)
*facepalm* and I still haven't watched this 
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whiskeyii
 Posts: 2254 |
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While I do think the Beauty and the Beast analogue was pretty much the weakest part of the movie (they really should’ve picked a different fairytale or made fewer blatant Disney allusions, imo), I’d put this as my third favorite after Summer Wars and Girl Who Leapt Through Time. I do think it’s much more thematically cohesive than his previous works, just a touch less put together than my top two, like they didn’t quite know how to move organically from one plot point to another.
That said, despite my initial worries about the qualities of the acting in the dubbed trailer, I thought the dub was actually pretty fantastic, with everything that sounded weird in the trailer probably coming from the fact that the lines were all pulled from different scenes and didn’t flow together properly. Also, whoever or whatever team transliterated those song lyrics deserves a freaking medal. It’s insane how close in both meaning and sound they managed to keep those songs, and Kylie McNeill just barely edged out Kaho Nakamura for me purely for very, very slight differences in musical approaches, but they’re so similar, it’s uncanny, but in the best way! And I reeeeally want to see more behind the scenes stuff for the 3D animation work on Belle; her rig was super impressive! |
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chrisb
 Subscriber Posts: 621 Location: USA |
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Kaho Nakamura can’t be beat, but Kylie Mcneil did an amazing job with the songs.
I had one major issue with the movie: soooo spoiler[everyone was cool with just letting this teenager travel across the country alone to save two abused children from their violent father?] |
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Alestal
 Posts: 605 Location: Dallas, Texas |
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The songs were amazing! So well done! Regarding your issue...spoiler[I completely agree! Also, the girl who played the saxophone was able to recognize the background sounds while in the midst of witnessing a domestic violence event? Shows where her head was at!] |
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wolf10
 Posts: 908 |
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Overall a good movie, but I'd say it's biggest weaknesses are probably structural.
It takes about half an hour for the Dragon to show up, and he's supposed to be one of the title characters (in Japanese, at least). Much of the earlier runtime is split between Suzu's meteoric rise to stardom and her angst over a loaf of un-sliced white bread named Shinobu, who said something nice to her when she was a kid and that's basically all we ever learn about him over this film's two-hour runtime. True love, amirite? (He's also spoiler[the only character in the supporting cast not to have an AS, which suggests not a single person on the production team, not even Hosoda himself, could imagine him having any sort of hidden depths or unrealized potential.] Ouch.) Unfortunately, this means the bulk of the movie's runtime is spent on things besides the relationship between our titular Dragon and Freckled Princess. There are some great comedic bits in there, too, so it's not entirely a waste, but this is where the structural issues rear their ugly head. Whenever Belle and Dragon are on screen together, their chemistry is absolutely magical, almost wordless except for Belle's serenading, and with a great emphasis on intimacy and body language. The best moments in the movie, far and away, are between these two characters, and you can tell this is where the heart of the movie (and it's budget) lies. Then there's an unexpected, and deeply unsettling, genre shift towards the end of the movie spoiler[that pulls us entirely into the real world and plays out like a true crime story.] It's ambitions, but the execution causes all of the story's forward momentum to grind to a screeching halt as the secondary cast justify their continued presence by processing a bunch of new information in service of establishing the true final confrontation. It's forgivable this first time, but only because that very dramatic, yet subdued, final confrontation leads to the emotional peak of the entire movie and its central relationship. It could have (and should have) ended there. But no, we still need not one but two more denouement scenes just to wrap up all the other secondary characters (for a second time), who don't really need or deserve it by that point, and by the time those are finally over the emotional peak has long passed, and we're still not really given any closure on anything. And while you're still in your seat contemplating all this, then the credits roll. Going into spoilers, I think it should have cut to credits spoiler[right after Suzu comes agrees to eat dinner with he dad. This brings their relationship full circle and shows, not tells, how far Suzu has come with her real-world relationships, without needing to have every single other character in the cast directly comment on it]. Everything after could just have easily been a wordless montage under the credits (maybe reusing the gimmick of the actual end credits, spoiler[showing off off each character and their AS]), and that format would have given us one last chance to see the two central characters together, even just in spirit. Concluding thoughts: spoiler[Kei is a very good boy and deserved more screentime in his own movie]. That is all. |
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tintor2
 Posts: 1894 |
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Dem fighting words 
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Alestal
Posts: 605 Location: Dallas, Texas |
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@wolf10 you did that thing! Your review was DEAD ON and hilarious.
spoiler[ I think Shinobu did have an AS, but they just didn't feature it at all? I believe it appeared towards the ending climax, but it was grouped in with sexy saxophone girl and crazy canoe guys avatars? Not sure how to verify that until this comes out on DVD and we can pick up on whatever random traits the AS may have? ] |
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Chiibi
 Posts: 4829 |
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I enjoyed the movie a lot (although the pacing does need work because some scenes were a bit too long and could have had some seconds cut).
My only other complaint is this: spoiler[ How the **** does an adult drown if the kid she saved didn't?]. Hosoda....come on. Explain how that makes one lick of sense? 
Just bite the bullet and have both spoiler[characters drown.] Is that cruel? Yes, but it least it's more believable! |
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wolf10
Posts: 908 |
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Why, thank you.  I enjoyed it overall, but the film student in me can't help but pick things apart. It will fare better on a rewatch, I'm sure.
To elaborate, spoiler[the gimmick of the end credits is a slide show that alternates the IRL characters with their AS counterparts. Suzu then Belle, Kei then Dragon, Tomo and Angel, and so on. Shinobu has slides at the very end, but there's no corresponding AS slide. He's also not wearing earbuds during the final concert scene like the rest of them, so I think we can conclude he's not projecting into U at the time. This also raises the huge question of how a non U-ser is the first to figure out Belle's identity, but I only realized that just now so props to Hosoda, I guess.] |
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Alestal
Posts: 605 Location: Dallas, Texas |
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Definitely will be a good rewatch on blu-ray! I kinda wished I saw it in an IMAX theatre, but they were only showing the subbed version in the ones near me. spoiler[Gotcha, that makes sense. I didn't stay for the ending credits as my brother was ready to go. Good point regarding how he was able to solve that mystery with no AS... maybe he just knew what her singing voice sounded like and connected the dots? Interesting that he'd be invested in U if he wasn't even a member of it though... Needless to say, there were definitely a few plot gaps.  ]
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doubleO7
 Posts: 1070 |
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While I enjoyed the movie a lot as a piece of entertainment, it felt pretty uneven thematically and the execution was all over the place. I loved the real-world drama and think those were the best parts of the movie, but I couldn't help but think that most of the cyber-world stuff, especially once the Beast and "Justice Squad" showed up, felt a little too cheesy and over-the-top and was clashing with the other half of the movie.
Summer Wars did a much better job of blending it's real and cyber worlds narratively, but this one felt like two tonally different movies that were stitched together. It was a bit jarring at times. And the scenes lifted wholesale from Beauty and the Beast were a bit too on-the-nose and felt out of place considering, as the reviewer pointed out, this was neither a proper adaptation of, nor thematically synergistic with that fairy tale. The fact that Bell and Beast didn't have enough development or screen time together to earn them those BatB "payoff" scenes didn't help either. The whole finale also felt abrupt, with spoiler[the abuse "resolution" (what was actually solved here aside from those kids getting some emotional support?) and Suzu's own emotional wrap-up afterwards] dealing with the remaining plot threads a little too quickly. That may have sounded like a harsh critique of it's story, but I still enjoyed it. Visually and musically it was stunning. It's still a very fun and entertaining film, but highly flawed and one that couldn't quite bear the weight of it's narrative and thematic aspirations. Last edited by doubleO7 on Fri Jan 21, 2022 5:39 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Gurren Rodan
 Posts: 263 |
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I'll agree that this was a captivating film in visuals and music, but a flawed story with awkward tonal shifts and a LOT of logic hurdles. The film definitely rides on the emotions of each moment, but that means there are plenty of scenes - especially in the real-world climax - that feel too convenient or incomplete.
That said, I definitely liked this film a lot, and I'm looking forward to seeing it again on home video, hopefully shared with friends. |
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iamthevastuniverse
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Summer Wars is still my favorite Mamoru Hosoda film by far probably the most solid dubbing effort that his films have received up to this point in time. I haven't had the chance to see Belle or its english dub yet probably won't be able to see it until hits home video in the months ahead.
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Neko-sensei
Posts: 285 |
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Hmmm. Obviously I've been afforded no opportunity to see the dub, but it seems as if something went wrong if audiences aren't seeing the reason for the structure of the film's climax—or maybe the problem is simply that it's a "Scouring of the Shire" sort of structure, which for some reason Americans seem to hate.
As I've argued in my previous responses to the film here and here, Belle is the Jonah-like story of a girl running from her mother's self-sacrificial goodness, which she sees as a rejection of the special bond that should exist between parent and child, only to discover that goodness cannot be escaped—her mother's sacrificial nature lives on in her. Structurally, the story of Suzu's growth follows the monomyth pretty closely (I'm really not much of a Campbell fan, but in this case his structure fits), and the climax reflects this. When at the pinnacle of the story spoiler[Suzu commits her act of kenosis by revealing her true identity to the denizens of "U," she repeats her mother's sacrifice for a stranger and finally understands the type of love for which she died. But where her mother's sacrifice and the child's salvation were one action, Suzu's sacrifice does not immediately save Kei's family, because she hasn't yet taken her lesson from the virtual to the real world. She must apply what she has learned to effect actual change (in the same way that saving the world was only practice for the hobbits to save the soul of the Shire). This is why the film has to keep going until Suzu has delivered the elixir.] Of course I thoroughly agree that the tech of the film makes no sense (which was also a problem in Summer Wars), although many of the other believability complaints I've seen in this thread are more cultural than anything else (for example, high schoolers here have much more freedom to travel alone). I think the only really false note is spoiler[the fact that the father backs down instead of seriously hurting Suzu]. Overall, Belle is a huge step up from Summer Wars (which was far more thematically disjointed—the real and virtual worlds have almost separate themes), and joins Mirai and Wolf Children in Hosoda's top three—for me it's his most moving piece yet. |
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wolf10
Posts: 908 |
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But the shot-by-shot, minute-by-minute, scene-by-scene execution (the tangible structure of the film itself) is kind of a mess. I will, for the third time now, restate that I enjoyed this move. I think embracing the good while acknowledging the bad is just a healthier way to appreciate cinema. |
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