I'd call Belle a movie rife with tired tropes, but at least in other movies with the same tropes, the plot and characters have more coherency.
Nothing about this movie makes sense. Of course, the animation is beautiful, and the music can be good when the lyrics themselves aren't the most trite, cliched thing you've ever heard, but neither of these things save Belle's lack of characters or plot. I wasn't the biggest fan of Summer Wars' presentation of dynamics and plot, but Belle feels like a beat by beat replay of OZ until someone realized they needed to tell a different story. They very well
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pluck the Beauty and the Beast plot(?) / sub-plot(?) out of thin air, an idea made worse by the fact Beauty and the Beast is inherently romantic and the one operating the Beast is a 14 year old when Suzu is just about to be 18 years old.
Belle throws characters at the audience's feet and expects to empathize with them at a moment's notice. I can't pinpoint whose presence exactly feels the most egregious and superfluous, but I will say this: Kamishin, Ruka, and ESPECIALLY Shinobu are useless. Who are these people? Kamishin and Ruka become romantically involved halfway through the movie and I don't know why I'm meant to care beyond the fact Suzu KNOWS them. SHE knows them, not ME, and Belle makes no attempts to give them legitimate personality that would compel me to care. I could have cared about Hiroka, but there was no room for her among the rest of the cast, so once she fell to the wayside as the "hacker sidekick" (a trope mimicked in Summer Wars), I no longer gave her much thought.
The worst of it was definitely Shinobu. I think he's got like 10 lines throughout the entirety of the movie, lmao. He's good at saying "Suzu" and pretending that he's doing a good job of "worrying about" her when he does sweet FA throughout the film. I don't understand the insinuation that he's meant to be a love interest, even if it isn't made explicit at the end of the film, because there's no substance to him. How do you protect someone you don't ever interact with? Wow, what a selfless guy!
The aunties from the choir or whatever it is are useless, too. None are shown to take on familial roles for Suzu following her mother's death, but they do successfully suggest she sing to Beast, something she takes to heart, because legitimate communication is stupid. Let's sing a song and be happy! Kumbaya! Anyway, even if they did represent aunts or something, Suzu's too busy ignoring her father to notice. (Cool plot beat that you picked up and dropped, like so many others.) By the way, I thought it was hilarious that they came to support Suzu during the climax of the movie, claiming that they already knew she was Belle, then just stood at the back of the classroom and ooed and awed as Suzu sang in her Unveiled form. Ok. Very useful. ALSO. The fact they (AND HER FATHER) let her travel to fucking Tokyo to save these kids from an abusive father ALONE is inane. What? You're expecting a child to defuse the situation? GO WITH HER. It's so mindless! What is the fucking deal with these people? This shouldn't be something Suzu should have taken on alone, even if they were trying to draw parallels between her and her mother.
Don't get me started on U and the idea of the AS and how mind-numbing it all is on paper and in execution. I couldn't get a grasp on what was even happening, and the world itself isn't much of a world, it's just... traffic? Shitty avatars, traffic, and citylines. Is this Los Angeles? Couldn't tell the difference. The vigilantes (led by Justin, a very vigilante-like name) were terrible, and a reskin of the Thundercats. No ending for them, either. Bye bye Justin, thanks for serving as a false antagonist.
Finally, the kids... Whatever. I didn't care. There's no development for them, you're just meant to feel bad because they're kids being abused by their father (who I thought would be Justin, lol, how dare I think there'd be a throughline with the characters). It's sad, sure, but the circumstances under which Suzu and the others find out about this are objectively stupid and kind of hilarious. They're live-streaming on YouTube or something? But the father doesn't realize this until later on when he cuts off the stream. We don't see actual repercussions, but they try to mollify the audience by having the eldest boy go on a rant about how people always claim they want to help but then don't / can't as though an abrupt display of violence from the father on a LIVESTREAM would go ignored. Anyway, Suzu sings to gain their trust (as her true self, because that makes sense???) and then scrambles to their address in Tokyo once they CSI Miami reverse image search these apartments that appear in a small window behind them. Sure, why not? Haha! Also, when one of the older ladies calls the police, they say there are "rules" they have to abide by (words out of her mouth) that make it so that they can't intervene. Someone's going to have to explain that logic to me, because it doesn't fucking add up.
Belle just doesn't know what lane it's chosen. It wants to be a story about loss, romance, talent, true-self and self-image, and family, but can't decide what it wants to say, so it becomes a discombobulated mess.
I'm listening to the soundtrack as I write this, though, so points in its favor for that! And also points for entertainment, because my roommate and I had the time of our lives watching this mess.
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May 30, 2022
Ryuu to Sobakasu no Hime
(Anime)
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I'd call Belle a movie rife with tired tropes, but at least in other movies with the same tropes, the plot and characters have more coherency.
Nothing about this movie makes sense. Of course, the animation is beautiful, and the music can be good when the lyrics themselves aren't the most trite, cliched thing you've ever heard, but neither of these things save Belle's lack of characters or plot. I wasn't the biggest fan of Summer Wars' presentation of dynamics and plot, but Belle feels like a beat by beat replay of OZ until someone realized they needed to tell a different story. They very well ... |
