One of the better fantasy movies, but it's quite flawed.
I'll name the pros and cons
Pros:
The cinematography was very good! Nice mix of wide shots, small amount of slo motion (Bit too much at the finale), and I loved the long tracking shots (Belle running toward the mirror, the hunters and the dogs in the forest after the deer)!!!
Editing! The director made smart choices here, and held on a take for just the right amount of time before cutting to the next shot! I hate choppy cutting, so it was refreshing to see good relaxed editing in a movie like this. Some examples would be Bell running toward the mirror, and the camera staying on her until she got close to it. It was a beautiful shot, reminiscent of Mia Sara running toward Darkness's door in his lair in Legend!!
The sets and costumes. All of the sets were spectacular and stunning, with the sea port village locations, the country house, the forest rock crevice, and of course the beast's castle! The dining hall with all of the glorious food was a sight to behold, as was the fireplace and surrounding architecture, and the massive stair cases. All of the little nooks and crannies are always a lot of fun to see in movies of the fantasy nature, and they did a really good job with giving the images a lot of character! The costumes were as stunning as the sets, especially the red outfits that the prince wore, and the female outfits had a magical quality to them with the gems sewn into place and embroidery. It would be a shame if this movie doesn't win awards for these areas.
The atmosphere was quite effective for much of the movie! Most of the style was natural, other than a few ugly color graded scenes, and the lighting was also very captivating and fun! This has a bit of Ridley Scott's Legend and Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula to it in style!
Loved the little pool with the healing spirit streams! New touch to the story that I don't believe has been done before!! The FX for this looked pretty decent!
The casting was pretty decent, especially Cassel as the prince/beast. Lea Seydoux as Belle was good, though I find her a bit overrated at times, and too much of the same in most of her roles. Loved the casting of Belle's father, as well as her siblings!
CONS:
Far too much CGI. Most of it wasn't very good CGI anyway, and a lot of it was unnecessary to begin with. First, the ships in the opening should have been miniatures. The giant stone beings could have been done with stop motion, or miniatures, or even men in costumes who are super imposed to look huge. The CGI for them was pretty rough on the eyes. The shot of the deer evading the hunters was one of the worst pieces of CGI ever to grace the screen!!! You all know which one I'm referring to, as it was like watching a mediocre video game from the late 90's. Also, a lot of the background location CGI was also rather poor in quality, and unneeded as much of the FX again could have been done with miniatures or shooting in real locations. Some of the natural and possibly easy to find locations looked entirely CG, and cheap because of the bad FX. The beast's face being CG was also a horrible idea, and took away from much of any impact he would have had, had his face been done with prosthetics and a bit of animatronic work. The design wasn't too bad, but the rendering and phony look of it was sad to see. They could have easily given Vincent the exact same look with makeup, and he would have been able to express just as much emotion as the dull CG. I didn't even find the face to be that expressive regardless, other than one or two moments when he was in a rage. The behind the scenes pics show Vincent in the costume with the prosthetic hands and even a prosthetic back of head and neck covering, but his face is exposed and with motion capture sensors on it. Maybe he didn't want to wear makeup??? I don't get it. Also, while I liked the look of the CG creatures, the CG for them was a bit rough as well, and could have used more work.
The casting of Perducus was somewhat flat to me. Yes, he looked like a typical villain, and was somewhat convincing, but not entirely, and he looked a bit bland with his expressions. His physicality appeared too wimpy.
Belle not being phased by the magical nature of everything felt odd to me. My French isn't very good, and I watched this with the subtitles, but were the people suppose to live in a world where they knew magic existed??? If not, then Belle and the others should have shown wonder and fear and nervousness at the forest making supernatural paths for them, as well as the giant stone gods and everything else. Instead, they all seemed non fussed and non impressed with it all. Belle only seemed frightened/taken aback by the beast, but nothing else.
The mountain nymph death was rather funny, maybe because of her actually being in dear form and getting killed lol. Kind of a nice twist to the story, was kind of goofy too. Not a big flaw.
The narration to the child from Belle lasted too long. The Princess Bride was a great funny movie that worked well with the narration and pauses, but with La Belle Et La Bete I wanted the narration to stop! Starting the story is fine, but then end it as the story actually begins.
So all in all, a mixed bag. I'd give it a /10 due to the flaws, because they were big enough to hurt a lot of the movie. It's sad when this happens, because this movie has A LOT of brilliant moments and ideas, and I think the director and everyone involved should be praised for making clever choices at times, but in the end it was a little too uneven to be called great.
Still, I'd recommend it highly for the good elements, and I'd place this above most of the current day fantasy films, so that is a big plus!!!