Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Disney’s live action remake of Beauty and the Beast hit Netflix today, which means that parents will soon find it incessantly played on repeat at all hours of the day (and that single, childless millennials like myself will likely find themselves watching it again and again in the dark sleepless shadows of the night). With its super-catchy score and winsome fairy tale romance, Disney’s Beauty and the Beast just hits a pop cultural nerve. The updated version features a literal all-star cast, but one performance stands above the rest. One actor steals the show. Sure, it’s called “Beauty and the Beast,” but I’d argue the film belongs to Luke Evans‘s Gaston.
I think Gaston is the best part of the Beauty and the Beast remake. And it galls me.
On paper, I loathe the character of Gaston. He’s boorish, pugnacious, and he canonically eats so many raw eggs per day that it kind of scares me. (SO MUCH UNCOOKED YOLK. YUCK.) In the original animated version of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, Gaston is defined by his patent misogyny. His interest in Belle is exclusively physical. He demeans her dreams and shrugs off her intellect. He’s defined by his avarice, his predatory streak. He is a hunter and Belle (and later, the Beast) are marks for him. It’s clear beyond all else that a marriage to Gaston wouldn’t just be the end of Belle’s dreams, but it would rob her of her self-possession.
The live action version of Beauty and the Beast softens Gaston. It’s a hokey metaphor, but the film really does humanize an animated character so that he comes across on screen in three dimensions. A huge part of this transformation is in thanks to actor Luke Evans — whom I’ll get to later — but another key part to it is the script. Gaston has, well, a backstory in Beauty and the Beast. He’s still a narcissistic hunter with a sight to woo Belle into an old-fashioned marriage, but he’s also a war veteran. He’s also a lot more charming. Part of that is the wealth of comic moments Gaston gets in this film, but another part is that he actually tries to win over Belle. He brings her flowers, he compliments her, he promises to care for her father, and in a deleted scene, he intercedes on her behalf. He even tries to explain that what he’s offering her is a pretty good deal for a French country girl still living under the thumb of the First Estate. Sure, he’s still rather sexist and he doesn’t care about literacy and there’s that whole thing where he ties up Belle’s father in the woods to die, but this Gaston is…uh…likable?
There’s probably a point to be made in that in these politically fraught times, Gaston seems to represent one way of looking at the world, one bent on maintaining the status quo, while Belle dreams of adventure in the great wide somewhere. The bottom line is that they aren’t compatible. Nevertheless, I kept quietly rooting for Gaston. (You know, up until that whole thing where he ties Belle’s father up in the woods to die. I mean, jeez, cut that part out, and this version of Gaston is basically a well-meaning fool hampered by the ignorance of his time and rank. Even raising a mob to take the Beast at the end can be seen as a guy just trying to eliminate a threat to his community. But again, no.)
Of course, the real reason this Gaston is so perniciously charismatic is that Luke Evans plays him as such. Luke Evans is having more fun than any other performer in this entire film — including Josh Gad. Evans throws himself into the part with happy abandonment. It helps that Evans has musical chops. His velvet baritone (baritenor?) slides through every solo he gets with a mix of confidence and warmth (as opposed to his co-star’s frail alto that’s repeatedly buttressed by the crackle of autotune). Luke Evans just makes Gaston fun, which is what a live action fairy tale film filled with singing candelabras and rose-based curses is supposed to be. Yes, this is also my way of saying we didn’t need a morose plague subplot. We needed more Gaston!
I’m still struggling with my feelings about this. When I watch any version of Beauty and the Beast, the character who excite me the most should be the “beauty” and the “beast.” Instead, I’m charmed by Gaston. Methinks I’ll be streaming Beauty and the Beast a lot in the middle of the night, over the next year, trying to decode this
Beauty and the Beast is now streaming on Netflix.
