Belle... A collection of music videos glued together by a really badly written narrative.
Belle is one of the weakest animated movies i have seen in the past few years, and that makes me really sad, as a fan of the director i went into this expecting an 8 or an 9, but what i got is a 5 at best.
Belle has a interesting idea, with its reworking of the "beauty and the beast" and its child abuse themes... But it fails to build on its characters and to explain basic premises of its own world, making it for a very boring and bland experience.
Most of the things we thought would be relevant were completely ignored and absolutely useless, we asked ourselves watching "did she get some disease and now is unable to sing in the real world and that is why the U is an escape?" No, they never address this, she just fails to sing and vomits once because the movie wanted to i guess? They keep all her "friends" completely irrelevant and underdeveloped until the last quarter of the movie, so i basically don't care about any of them in the end, they never explain the socio economical structure of the U world... How does this work? They say the avatar is made automatically based on people physiognomy, but the avatars are crazy different in form and species, how can that be made from ones physiognomy? How is the invitation system decided? Who is invited and why? Why even have an invitation system instead of selling the app or freely distributing it if that ends up irrelevant to the story? Why show us a very interesting singer character on the start that rivalizes our belle if you are just going to forget her for the whole movie? How to know which avatars are AI controlled and which are actually people? Is it possible do die in U? If not, what is the relevance of all the conflict we see?
Belle raises too many questions and answer very little, it presents us with an beautiful and interesting virtual world but tells us NOTHING about it and how it all works, it presents us with futuristic technology in a world that seems stuck in the 2000s, it gives us many bland and uninteresting characters with only one personality trait each and develops none of them... There are so many problems, so many drawn out scenes... That it all gets boring and tiresome...
And.... That makes me really sad, the music is GREAT, the visuals are BEAUTIFUL, the music scenes are AMAZING... But they are few and far in between and the rest of the movie... Is not interesting, they present us a nice duality of belle and the beast, but their interest in one another is so out of nowhere and forced that it doesnt feel even a little bit real or natural... There is a great scene that develops the characters and emotional connects, but it is only in the last quarter of the movie... When it has already lost all my interest and attention... and the plot of child abuse is ok and very important... But it feels shoved in... The main plot... Feels shoved in... Oh, and how they find the boy... Well, that was just the worst "investigation" bit i have ever seen...
I really wanted to like this movie, but there are just too many unanswered questions, just too little character development, and a plot that is just generic and bland enough to lose my attention... The visuals and music alone are not enough...
At the end, i feel like they made some really great music videos and didnt want to release it as just animated music videos, so they wrote a really bland movie around it and shoved a controversial and important theme(child abuse) to appeal to peoples hearts in an effective but kinda cheap way.
The film is all a satire that "throws a stone into the pond" to annoy other Horror movies, because apparently, Italians (but also viewers in general) don't like anything with this movie genre and we always have something to say about it, and it's true, that's how we are, and on the one hand it's good because we always manage to get closer - but never quite - to perfection thanks to criticism and past horror flops, and moreover I think that the horror genre is the most criticised of all, not because it sucks but because the fanbase of this genre is the most passionate. Some people hated horror and now they're forced to watch it just because it gained so much traction in the last years and with so many subgenres, there's something for everyone so I understand if they start to like it.
However, this movie had great potential, visually and auditorily, it's not bad, I remember some very captivating scenes like the one when they are in the house and all of a sudden this intense red comes out with the sound of the alarm in the background; or the green nocturnal setting of the camper area embraced by the darkness towards the forest, it's scary.. but I still agree with some reviewers that they wrote this plot just to gain more positive feedback.
8/10
I decided to watch this again after 2 years it came out because my mind completely erased everything about this movie.
I can't give it a 10 or even a 9 because for a psychological horror genre, the storyline is original but a bit weak, you can start to see where the movie is going in the first 30 minutes, and then it's just waiting for it to happen.
This movie is based on a racism and it wants to send the message that there's more happening in the real world and I like that, there's a good connection between that and the plot.
I love the story, it's very intriguing and it submerges you fully in the very first 10 minutes, its pace is very good, you can feel the tension for the main character forming and each scene has its importance, there are absolutely no fillers but as I said in the beginning it's a movie where you already know how the ending is going to look like from the start which is not a good thing especially for this genre.
The music also stands out a lot, it's absolutely perfect.
There's a major plot twist but again, you basically already know it's going to happen even before the scene with the photos in the cabinet which I would consider the turning point of the movie.
All in all, great movie, an absolute must watch for horror fans, I recommend you watch this even if you're not.
