Welcome to 5 Minutes Or Less, a script breakdown for the only the biggest blockbusters, giving you hundreds of millions of dollars worth of explosive big screen action in less than 300 seconds worth of reading or your money back. (You didn’t pay for this, so there’s nothing to refund here.)
In this edition, buckle up as we get into top gear to take a gander at BEAUTY & THE BEAST. Obviously, SPOILERS!
FADE UP. A BIG PARTY AT A BIG CASTLE.
PRE-BEAST: I love big parties. But only with rich people. Poor people are gross. Especially poor female people.
POOR FEMALE PERSON: *shows up at the door*
PRE-BEAST: Ew, gross.
POOR FEMALE PERSON: *is actually a witch, turns everyone in the castle into household objects because of reasons, except for Pre-Beast, who gets turned into a Beast, also because of reasons*
CUT TO: TWENTY YEARS LATER. SMALL VILLAGE IN 19TH CENTURY FRANCE.
EVERYONE: *is speaking English, despite it being 19th Century France*
HERMOINE: I love reading books and being left alone.
GASTON: I hate reading books and leaving you alone. Marry me?
LEFOU: People are going to make a bigger deal out of me than is in any way necessary.
HERMOINE’S DAD: I’m a little bit crazy, and I’m off to steal from some stranger’s rose garden.
CUT TO: THE BIG CASTLE.
HERMOINE: Release my Dad from prison for stealing from your rose garden and I’ll take his place.
AUDIENCE: Why not just … get the police? I’m going to Wiki if they had the police in 19th Century English-speaking France the second this movie is over…
BEAST: Fair enough. You live in this cage now.
CANDLESTICK: I have a French accent purely to remind you that this is actually set in France.
CLOCK: I have the most English accent imaginable because I’m not being paid enough to do a French accent.
TEAPOT: Maybe you’ll fall in love with the Beast and you’ll just kinda grow to enjoy living here?
AUDIENCE: Isn’t that the exact definition of Stockholm Syndrome?
CUT TO: BAR.
GASTON: I’m singing and dancing and totally heterosexual.
LEFAU: I’m singing and dancing and totally (mumble mumble mumble)
HERMOINE’S DAD: The Beast took Hermoine! Are there police in 19th Century France?! I can’t stop yelling!
GASTON: Let’s save Hermoine from her Dad’s vivid hallucinations!
CUT TO: THE BIG CASTLE.
BEAST: Would you like to see your dead mother in the last moments right before she died horribly?
HERMOINE: Uhm…
BEAST: *transports them to a plague-ridden apartment*
HERMOINE’S MUM: I have the plague. I will kiss this trinket and give it to my daughter. *dies*
AUDIENCE: So… that trinket has the plague on it now? Should Hermoine be wearing tha-
HERMOINE: I still wear that trinket to this day. I love you Beast for showing me this!
AUDIENCE: Ew, gross. Also, isn’t that the exact definition of bestiality?
CUT TO: ROOF OF THE BIG CASTLE.
GASTON: I hate you, Beast! I wanted to marry Hermoine, despite the fact that she clearly hates me, we have nothing in common, and we barely know each other.
HERMOINE: I am a strong, independent, modern woman who doesn’t need a man to get by.
AUDIENCE: You literally just fell in love with an animal that kept you prisoner. This is like the alternative ending to that Fair City storyline.
ALL THE THINGS IN THE HOUSE: *get into a big CGI fight*
GASTON: *dies somewhere around now*
BEAST: *gets turned back into a Non-Beast, complete with Mills & Boon book cover hair*
LADIES IN THE AUDIENCE: Ew, gross. He looked better as the Beast.
HERMOINE: See ladies? All you have to do to find true love is have your Dad steal from a rich man and then be his prisoner and then hey presto, happily ever after.
LEFOU: Now that Gaston is dead, I shall dance with another man, and that will be enough to warrant a thousand online think-pieces.
AUDIENCE: What exactly was the message here? Sometimes hostage situations have a happy ending?
FADE TO BLACK.
AUDIENCE: *reading from Wiki* The French Police Force began in 1812. See Hermoine? This all could have been avoided. All of it!
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