One of my favorite Disney movies growing up was “Beauty and the Beast.” I identified so much with the bookworm Belle and her journey,  so when I learned that Disney was doing a live remake with Emma Watson as Belle, I was thrilled. I have to admit, when I heard about the “gay moment” that had caused the movie to be banned in some countries of the world, I entered the theater with a bit more ambivalence than I would have liked.

I didn’t have a thing to worry about.

The movie immediately grabbed my attention with the fantastical and elaborate settings and costumes, transporting you to a different world that made me gasp from the beauty. It was the perfect backdrop for the familiar characters to shine.

Belle is fantastic as played by Emma Watson. I loved her as Hermione, and I loved her just as much in this movie. She added her own modern, feminist twist to bookish day dreamer Belle, making her more outspoken, strong willed, and unwilling to back down. She also had the same curiosity and kindness that made Belle who she is.

Her father Maurice, as played by Kevin Kline, was not quite the bumbling comic relief as in the original movie, but he was a still an attentive, if scatterbrained, father. As an inventor, his creation was not an impossible contraption, but a beautiful and elegant music box that embodied a more peaceful past.

One of the things I liked about this movie, as a fairy tale enthusiast, was that this movie added an aspect from the original fairy tale, of how Belle asked her father to bring back a rose, and of how the Beast didn’t imprison him until after Maurice attempted to take a rose from the garden.

The Beast is a magnificent CGI monster enacted by Dan Stevens, who still has the same temper as the original Beast, but also gave him a dry sense of humor.

Let us not forget the narcissistic villain Gaston, played by the actually good-looking Luke Evans. While his Gaston was not as muscle bound and as boorish as the original, he made the character more charming, more charismatic, and more cruel.

He’s not just the pinnacle of manhood in the village, he’s an ex-captain from the revolution, and therefore commands the respect of everyone in the village, all of which blinded everyone to his narcissism and cruelty.

I was a little worried when I learned that La Fou was going to have a “gay moment” with Gaston, but I soon realized I had nothing to worry about. La Fou, as played by Josh Gad, is Gaston’s adoring friend, and while it is obvious that he is in love with Gaston, he is not entirely blind to his friend’s morally gray faults, and by the end of the movie moves on from a bad relationship.

And let’s not forget the wonderful cast of talking furniture, made up of big name British actors, including my personal favorites of Emma Thompson as Mrs. Potts and Ian McKellan as Cogsworth, foiled by the very determined matchmaker that is Lumiere played by Ewan McGregor.

I was very pleased with this movie, which answered several plot holes that were in the original movie, such as why did no one in the village notice a castle anywhere nearby, how did the Beast become so bad he needed to be cursed, and perhaps the most important question of all, what happened to Belle’s mother.

This movie is still a musical, and the musical numbers are just as fantastic as in the original, with the addition of two new songs, “How Does a Moment Last” and “Evermore.” The next time I see this movie, I hope to sing my heart out with it.