It's hard not to think of Pixar and, by extension Apple, as amazing American institutions built by the astonishing, guiding hand of the late Steve Jobs. Pixar, after all, has churned out a steady stream of box office smashes, with the occasional stumble. Yet, at the same time, Pixar has become a cancer that has infected the Western World's lauded history of traditional, hand-drawn animation like an invasive species. We are paying a very steep price for Pixar's success today, and for the foreseeable future.
So, I watched Beauty & The Beast (2017) last night. Wow. Just SUPER wow, and not for the reasons you might think. It's a dud. A flop. I hate it. The entire opening musical sequence, so full of life and deeply engaging in the animated feature, is dead, limp, and lifeless. Everything after that is a disjointed, misshapen mutation of the brilliant, reinvigorating, emotional feature-length animated version from 1991.