Review: Belle and the Beast: A Christian Romance (2007)
Also known as Beauty and the Beast: A Latter Day Tale, I struggle to call this 2007 film two things: a film, and a chick flick. It's actually a 90 minute piece of Christian propaganda. However, as it is an audio-visual product that follows a female character, mostly in a romantic aspect, it is by definition a chick flick, so I must acknowledge it as such.
Directed by BJ Alexander, Belle and the Beast: A Christian Romance follows Summer Naomi Smart as Belle, a young Christian woman who is beautiful in physical appearance and personality. One day, her father accidentally breaks a valuable item belonging to wealthy businessman Eric Landry (played by Matthew Davis), who is so horrible, that he has gained himself the nickname "The Beast" in this neighbourhood. Landry is furious at this, and threatens Belle's father's career until Belle offers to be his personal assistant for free, working for Landry until he feels the debt has been repaid. As time passes, they learn things about and from each other, potentially growing closer in the process...
There is so much wrong with this film, I don't even know where to begin. Even the opening title card steals the font from the Disney cartoon to try and trick you into thinking you may get a story with equally high quality.
The title card for the wonderful Disney animated classic...
...and the remarkably similar font style used in the title card for this weak production.
I usually start by writing about the characters, but this time, I really have to talk about the visual and audio qualities of the film, with “quality” being an overly keen word. I don't know what jar of Vaseline this was filmed on, but the picture quality is the worst I have seen for a long time. The camerawork seems competent, (someone clearly invested in a tripod), but the shots leave a lot to be desired because of the consistently blurry look. It's very reflective of the films budget, and that isn't something to be impressed by. I understand that as a low-budget film from 2007, there was never going to be a HD version of this, but I know the shots could have been clearer than they are.
Additionally, this film has no score. It doesn’t help that a lot of the acting is stiff and awkward to watch anyway, but because it's accompanied by total silence, it feels so much worse. The only times music does feature in the film is when four short songs are each played once, (including one over the end credits). One song that plays is called "I Will Always Believe" and it's about someone being shown the way in their Christian faith. Having almost an hour of complete silence (apart from the dialogue) disrupted by a song about trusting Jesus was such a shock to my ears, that I almost feel like it was the filmmakers decided tactic for making the Christian message stick. If it wasn’t such a forgettable song, it might have worked. These songs aren’t bad per se, they just aren’t good enough to be used in a film to enhance the atmosphere, with each song sounding the same as the one that came before it. It’s frustrating, especially when there are genuinely good Christian musicians out there like Skillet and He is We, (but please note I’m a film critic, not a music reviewer).
Let's move onto the topic of our two leads, beginning with our main female character: Belle Watson. Yes, I have noted the irony of this character's name coming before Belle was played by Emma Watson in the 2017 Disney remake of the animated film. This Belle, however, is played by the least painful to watch actor in this film. Sadly, that is the best compliment I can bestow her at this time. For the majority of this film, I was supportive of Smart's performance and considered her the most competent in the cast. Unfortunately, this illusion was shattered when she had a crying scene in front of Eric. Smart cannot fake cry. It looks like the director threw water in her face to make her mascara run, and she does that weird smiling thing actors do when they try to force tears out of their eyes, but can't make them come. I laughed for the entirety of this scene, when I was supposed to be feeling compassion for Belle.
This just isn't a face I can feel sorry for.
Belle is the most likeable of the characters, but rather bland. She works in an orthodontist’s office, which is something you don’t see very often on screen, yet it’s a realistic job, so I commend the film for that at least. She has one female friend (also a co-worker in the orthodontist office) her age, but mostly seems to be a carer for her dad and younger brother and sister (she also has another brother apparently, but he is never shown onscreen and the brother who we do see adds nothing and could have easily been removed). There’s a nice reveal about how Belle stepped up to help her family after her mother died, and the lengths she went to. For a basic female lead, I have seen characters written worse than this, although she does have her fair share of clunky plot points and awkward dialogue. For example, when she meets Eric for the first time, this is how she introduces herself:
"My name is Belle... it means beauty."
Eric looks her up and down.
"If you say so," he replied.
The fact that Belle is too good for Eric aside, who enters a room and shares the meaning of their name? That would be like if I entered a room and introduced myself with:
'My name is Caitlin, it means pure."
I wouldn't do that, and not just because it could lead to some awkward conversations. It's just bad writing.
It also doesn’t help Belle that she has been given no distinctive sense of style, unless a style called “Breasts Must Not Be Shown or Hinted At” exists. Her wardrobe being all over the place yet tame actually reflects Belle and this film rather well. She is shown reading the Bible and underlining quotes in it for fun in her limited spare time. I would have argued this character is fine considering the others written in this film, but then I remember that Belle is supposed to be attractive and unique, someone a person would want to improve themselves for. Someone a person would stop being a "beast" for. This Belle just isn’t special enough to make me believe she could influence a person so strongly.
Now let’s talk about her love interest.
Eric Landry frightened me, and he is supposed to be our romantic male lead. I don't like him as a character in this terrible script but even less so with Matthew Davis' portrayal. For the majority of this film, Eric rivalled Oliver from The Prince and Me 3 as my most despised male character in a film I’ve reviewed for this blog. Oliver is only ever so slightly worse, but it’s still worth noting as Oliver wasn’t a romantic lead, but Eric is. Therefore, Eric matters more.
I genuinely thought that Eric's surname was "Blandy" for the first few minutes of this film, and that wouldn't suit this guy at all because he is far from bland. The overacting from this man is astonishing. When Eric is supposed to be a mean character living up to his nickname "The Beast" (believe me, we'll get to that soon enough), he is too angry and I felt so uncomfortable at the idea that Belle was going to have to end up with this creepy, genuinely nasty guy who seemed much older than her. I can't find out how old Davis is or how old he was at the time of making this film, but there are some scenes where he and Belle look more like father and daughter. It just felt wrong.
Davis isn't an ugly man, and no attempt is made to have him be that way to make the Beast part of his character a physical attribute. If there was an age gap, that might have been an interesting way for Belle to have her own obstacle to overcome. Belle/Beauty is seen as perfect, but isn't because she has to overcome the Beast's appearance in the fairy-tale to love him. Meanwhile, he has to realise that he will never be loved when his soul is as ugly as the face he was cursed with. There is nothing for Belle to overcome in this respect, making her a further, bland Mary Sue. This also weakens Eric as a character, because he's just some aggressively angry rich guy here. The overacting from Davis scared me, not anything about the character himself.
Also, seeing what Beast makeup this budget could produce would have been quite fun. I suppose by adding this makeup, the Christian message would have been played down somehow, because it wouldn't be the most prominent thing on display. So, what do you sacrifice when retelling this story, with the morals the filmmaker would have wanted instead of those shared by the original storyteller?
Landry's characterisation is so poorly done throughout this film. We watch him be nasty to Belle for the first 35 minutes of this film, then he's ill for one day, after which he is nice and dotes on Belle for the rest of the film. There is no character development here. I almost can't understand how a film could be this lazy.
Now it's time for me to talk about Landry being known as "The Beast." Firstly, he seems to be proud of this, as he has the engraving of a beasts head by the entrance to his house. I wouldn't be surprised if it was revealed that he was the kind of guy to give his penis that nickname either. Whenever someone else refers to Eric as "Beast", it feels unnatural and clunky, because it isn't an every day insult. "That Rich Prick" would feel a lot more natural.
Eric also has a negative reputation throughout the whole town with this name, and the way other people talk about him is appalling, Maybe it wouldn't be so bad, except this town is supposed to consist entirely of good Christian people. Good people, Christian or not, shouldn't treat someone they don't like in the way the people in this film do.
Certainly, Eric is terrible, but even I felt somewhat sorry for him at one point. This moment is when Belle’s younger sister, Kelli, reveals to Belle that her Sunday school teacher used “The Beast” as an example of pride and anger to warn the children with. I don't know who this Sunday school teacher is, but I don't think bitching about your neighbours behind their backs to a group of children is a good way to preach any religion. Also, this Sunday teacher apparently told Kelli's class that Eric is an alcoholic. The fact that Eric actually is an alcoholic, and it’s a recurring topic throughout the film, baffles me. On the one hand, if he was only rumoured to be an alcoholic and wasn’t one, then the teacher is sharing damaging gossip with a group of impressionable young people. On the other hand, sharing that Eric is an alcoholic and this is fact, isn’t it wrong to use a strangers real problem as a life lesson for children? Especially when you have already been telling CHILDREN what a terrible person he is, instead of trying to reach out to him and offer help?
This Sunday school teacher – who is never shown onscreen by the way – isn’t exactly inspiring the Christian spirit in me to come out and grace kindness upon everybody.
Eric is apparently an alcoholic because he and his wife got into a car accident, which killed his wife. He believes his wife’s death was so specific that God must have planned it. This is why he's angry at God. I actually don't mind the context of the conversation, but the way Eric's lines are written are just so heavy handed it's hard to engage with the message.
I wish this film had been brave enough to try and explore Eric maybe becoming agnostic or an atheist after this tragedy. It could add some depth to his character, and it would make more sense as to why he’s such an outsider in his community. Nope, he’s still a believer, just a very angsty one.
The way Eric’s alcoholism is handled astonishes me with it's sheer insensitivity. His coping technique is to keep a full bottle of alcohol in a glass case on display, so he can constantly look at it and be reminded of how he used to be. This level of self-loathing in Eric and need to punish himself was the closest I ever came to feeling sorry for him, aside from the Sunday school teacher incident. As far as I knew, being an alcoholic isn’t a condemnable sin in the Bible (not with all the wine mentioned in there at least). I struggle to see why this matter is treated so harshly. Why does the community shun him for this quality in particular? Even his housemaid acknowledges the alcoholism, but it doesn't seem to have any depth to her (as her performance found no depth with me).
One side note that I don’t think counts as a spoiler, there’s a scene where Eric breaks the glass to get to the bottle with his fist. His hand is completely fine, no cuts or blood or any wound in it. Another lazy moment this film has to offer.
Eric’s wealth is another issue. After watching this film, I’m still not entirely sure what he does. It’s something to do with business meetings and files, resulting in him apparently having lots of money. He can’t take his profession too seriously if he was willing to take on Belle as his PA, in exchange for not getting her dad fired. Why would he do this? He has no idea if she is capable of the job, and she was given no information about what the role entailed. If Eric is known as an uptight business man, maybe show some business sense? Yes, it's a low budget chick flick and business arrangements are not generally what people want to see in those, but I need to at least believe in the logic of it all. There are certain issues with the location and props that make the idea of Eric being wealthy laughable. The key moment in the film that highlights this for me is when Belle is guided by Eric’s housekeeper to find him in “The Spa Room.” It turns out that "The Spa Room" is just someone's living room with a jacuzzi dumped in the middle of the floor.
It’s not a particularly well decorated room, and at best looks like it is part of an outdated lower middle class family home (even by 2007 standards). It does not look like it belongs to a wealthy bachelor. To make matters worse, when Eric gets out of the jaccuzzi, he asks Belle to hand him a towel. She proceeds to hand him a green rag of a towel with stains on it. You can see them clearly. I understand that this is a cheap production, but was there not a single person in the cast or crew who could afford just one fluffy white, new towel for this one scene?
Look at the blotchy patches on that towel!
To further this point, it would appear that I have neglected to mention exactly what it was the Belle’s father broke to set Eric in enough of a rage to want to get him fired. Belle’s father broke what was apparently an extremely valuable vase. This is that vase, before it was smashed:
This was the best shot I could show you of the vase before it was broken. They don't spend any time using it in a shot to establish the scene.
It was worth “thousands” according to Eric. With all due respect to my eight year old self, that vase looks like something I would have made in Primary school. It's just a grey, clay vase. The prop team for this film could have gotten a cheap floral-printed antique from a charity shop and yes, maybe that would have looked a little tackier, but I would have believed the price tag a little more at least.
The locations for Eric’s house scenes do later improve, including a decent looking cinema room. However, some consistency in Eric’s style and tastes would have been appreciated.
One of the better looking rooms shown in Eric's house.
The other actors are pretty weak, with the young girl playing Belle's younger sister Kelli actually being one of the stronger performers in the overall ensemble. Belle’s dad is a notably irritating and dense character. The worst side character, however, is Craig.
Craig, as played by Everest Bishop (and yes, it does amuse me that someone acting in a Christian film has the surname "Bishop").
Or “Kregg,” as it is pronounced in this American production. Craig is a creepy guy who met Belle once and decides he is in love with her. Kreepy Kregg (as he shall henceforth be known) then proceeds to woo Belle with seduction techniques including stalking her, parking outside her house for what appears to be hours at a time, going into her home to ask her father about her while she’s out (the dad should know better) and getting Belle’s father fired from his job to frame Eric.
To the films credit, he is openly a weirdo that Belle would never go for, and the lengths taken to make him as unattractive as possible in any sense of the word is almost admirable. This also creates its own problems though. While Disney offered confident, physically attractive Gaston versus the hideous yet kind Beast fighting for the female lead, Belle and the Beast: A Christian Romance offers two average looking men that each come with their own extremes of unattractive personality (and acting) traits that cannot be redeemed.
Kreepy Kregg isn't well acted, but the way he's written just makes him ridiculous.
He freaks out at Belle when she refers to Eric by his first name in one scene:
"That's informal," he comments to her.
"You expect me to call him 'Mr Landry' all the time?" Belle challenges.
"It would make me feel better." Kreepy Kregg tells her.
He doesn't even know her. Prior to this, he's talked to her maybe two or three times briefly. This is alarmingly possessive whatever their relationship would be.
Belle also points out that she calls her boss at her other job by his first name too, and shuts Kreepy Kregg down. Good on her. Eric isn't any better, as at the end of this scene between Belle and Craig, it's revealed he was watching and listening into their conversation the whole time. That's as invasive and wrong as Kreepy Kregg showing up at Belle's workplace unexpectedly in this scene for them to have had that conversation (which he did).
There's also a scene where Kreepy Kregg invites Belle over to watch some DVDs he rented out. That is so 2007, it amuses me.
The plot is weak, especially when it comes to pacing, as pointed out earlier with Eric becoming ill and recovering with a whole new attitude. The logistics of some scenes are also overwhelmingly naïve when compared to how they would be played out in real life. For example, while studying for a test that's due to take place that day, Belle gets a call from Kelli's school, as Kelli has apparently gotten herself into trouble. Belle frets that she may have to miss her exam in order to pick up Kelli from school, but Eric offers to pick Kelli up instead so that Belle can go and take her test.
Nice of Eric, but while I don't know how an American school would handle this, there is no way this would be acceptable in an English school. For a start, I don't think any teacher would be willing to send off a child -never mind how vile- off with an adult who is a stranger to the child, let alone one heavily rumoured to be an alcoholic and who is unpleasant enough to be deemed "The Beast" by the entire town.
Furthermore, a child in primary schools here have to be picked up by one adult who the school knows to be responsible for that child and has the paperwork to back it up. They wouldn't send the child away with an adult that wasn't recognised.
So neither Kelli or Eric would do well in that situation in reality.
To add a knife repeatedly stabbing itself into the wound that is this film, it ends with a line from the narrator (who like narrators in every bad film, only appear at the very start and very end of the film, when really they were never needed at all). The line is this: "While their world wasn't perfect, they still lived happily ever after." Not quite the fairy tale final line one hopes to hear, but then, I feel uncomfortable with Belle and Eric living happily ever after.
This film is so, so poor. The frustrating thing for me is that there is good content out there with strong characters who stand by their religions, and are stronger still by not trying to force their beliefs upon everyone else.
My favourite example of this is the television show Jane the Virgin, which follows Jane Villanueva, a Catholic woman who wants to wait until marriage to have sex for the first time. Jane still goes out on dates and gets into serious, well-scripted and acted relationships with men, whom she still engages in other kinds of sexual activity with. Jane is such a likeable character, I believe that these men would want to wait to have sex with her to make her happy, yet their frustrations aren’t ignored or downplayed either. Jane’s mother and her best friend also have frequent and openly sexual relationships. Jane will offer her opinion to them, but it’s always as a way of guidance, never an excuse for her to chastise them and put them down while putting her virginity on a pedestal to shame them with. It’s a fair, yet realistic portrayal of how Jane’s religion influences her beliefs.
Unlike the heavy-handed lines in Eric’s explanation of how his wife’s death affected his religious faith, Jane the Virgin also handles the theme of grief impacting faith far better, as shown in the episode “Chapter Fifty-One.” The Catholic faith is a central theme to Jane and her family, and in this particular episode, Jane admits to a nun that she has been struggling with her faith because of a tragedy (which I won’t spoil here, as I only share spoilers when I don’t think the product is worth watching). The emotion from Gina Rodriguez in this scene as Jane is probably why this scene is so successful in my eyes. She really seems so hurt and also confused at why a bad thing happened to someone she loves so much when she has always tried to do the right thing by God, who she greatly believes in. Additionally, the writing is strong and the topic is handled with great sensitivity. I highly recommend you check out this show if you haven’t already.
A Walk to Remember is not a good film, but although the main character was a devout Christian, she still had a relatively normal looking relationship with her boyfriend. They kissed a lot, by which I mean a fair, normal amount for a couple. You don’t really see that in film. The average film couple only seems to get a maximum of two kisses: the first kiss and the kiss that confirms that they are going to enter a relationship. Additionally, the main couple in that film also didn’t get along at first, but you did see realistically paced changes in the main male character as he evolved to care about and understand the character who would later become his girlfriend. The pacing in his development as a character is something Belle and the Beast should have at least attempted to mimic.
In conclusion, please avoid Belle and the Beast: A Christian Romance. Even on a so bad it’s good level, I think the viewer would find themselves feeling awkward to be watching it rather than laughing at it. There is nothing good, new or unique here as a chick flick, Christian film, or Beauty and the Beast retelling. It was just very poorly done.
I'm curious to know what Christian people think of this film, and ones like it. Meanwhile, I don't think I'll be reviewing any more Christian or religion based chick flicks for a while.
Oh. I haven't done A Walk to Remember yet, have I?
Chick Flick Check List Elements: 1, 4, 5, 7, 22, 31 (+1 extra point for enduring Kreepy Kregg), 42, 50, 53, 55, 56, 59, 60,
Total: 14
Is this really a chick flick or will men like it too? As I pointed out at the start of this review, by definition, this is a chick flick and certainly contains more than several of the tropes in the genre. However, I still refuse to believe it is light, romantic based entertainment aimed at women. It's Christian propaganda.
Would I recommend this film? No. If you like so bad they're good films, you may have a laugh watching this, but I think it’s mainly an uncomfortable and awkward viewing experience.
Quote of the film: "Above all, Belle loved God and her family." - Narrator.
Film rating: 1/10
