As any cultural observer has noticed, the Disney Ouroboros, having consumed every intellectual property on earth, has now turned on its own tail and cannibalized the very animated films that were once the hallmark of its artistic output, excreting pre-digested live-action remakes in its wake. What began as a trickle in the nineties and early aughts turned into a veritable flood during whatever we call the last decade. While Disney zealously guards their own intellectual property, they have not yet found a way to possess things that are already in the public domain. And so, in the same decade that Disney cranked out live-action remakes of Cinderella (2015), Beauty and the Beast (2017), and Aladdin (2019), three French adaptations of the same contes de fées (all with French pedigrees, I might add) also saw the light of day—in two out of three cases, before their Disney counterparts. And, in two out of the three cases, the French films are much, much worse than the Disney abominations.
Beauty and the Beast (La Belle et la Bête, Christophe Gans, 2014)
Beauty and the Beast, as we have come to know it, is a tale as old as 1740 and a song as old as approximately 1990 (Howard Ashman may have taken some poetic license). The first iteration of the story came from the pen of Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve, a novelist who wrote a novel-length version. It was abridged and rewritten by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont in 1756. This version, rendered into English, entered Andrew Lang’s Blue Fairy Book in 1889, and from there it eventually entered the public domain. None of this matters much, as the version all children will know from now until the end of time is Disney’s, which makes some considerable alterations to the rickety scaffolding at the beginning and end. And it’s hard to be too mad about this, because Disney’s Beauty and the Beast remains one of the best animated films ever made.
To the credit of Christophe Gans—director of cult classics Crying Freeman (1995), Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001), Silent Hill (2006), and… yeah, that’s about it—he does not attempt to pillage the memory of the Disney version. Instead, he pillages the memory of Jean Cocteau’s La Belle et la Bête, the classic French film from 1946, widely (and justly) considered one of the best ever. The Letterboxd summary claims that Gans is adapting the neglected original version of de Villeneuve, but an early sighting of the republican tricolor flag suggests that this version probably does not take place before 1740. The bleu, blanc et rouge are seen flying on one of the vessels of a wealthy merchant who loses his entire fortune at sea, to the dismay of his three sons and two of his three daughters. When one of the ships resurfaces, the merchant is convinced that he has been saved from destitution. He goes on a long journey to recover his goods, immediately learns that they have been seized to pay his debts, and loses his way on the return journey, finding himself in an enchanted castle. Then he sees a rose and…
Look, I said it was rickety! This is the exact set-up of Cocteau’s version, with the same extended delay until we finally meet the Beast, here voiced by Vincent Cassel and played by the finest CGI a mid-budget 2014 movie could afford. Cassel had worked before with Gans in Brotherhood of the Wolf, where he starred opposite Monica Bellucci. Gans seems to have had the Midas touch for anointing future Bond girls—Bond girls in the same Bond picture, no less—since Cassel’s screen partner this time is Léa Seydoux, who, to this point, had only appeared in minor roles in English-language films but had major star turns in Blue is the Warmest Color (2011), Farewell, My Queen (2012), and my favorite recurring dream. Here she plays Belle, and she is. One of the criticisms lobbied against this film is that it is little more than a glorified perfume commercial. They say that like it’s a bad thing!
You know what is bad, though? The CGI. In addition to the Beast, we have an assembly of cute creatures that could be described as either “puppy gremlins” or perhaps “proto-Porgs.”
Then we have some specious CGI animals in a series of flashbacks to when the prince was human (Oh, spoiler: the Beast is a cursed prince). The flashbacks do double duty of unloading bad CGI on the audience and disrupting the story by showing us Vincent Cassel’s face, but at least this segment also has gratuitous nudity. The last act, in which some ruffians descend on the castle to strip it bare, not only has spotty CGI but a head-scratching turn to action as massive stone colossi come to life and smash, stomp, and hurl the thieves to death in glorious slo-mo. Then Belle and her brothers must fend off the attacking forest as they search for a way to save the Beast’s life. Welcome to Zack Snyder’s Beauty and the Beast!
Is it better than the Disney remake? It’s not a patch on the 1991 or 1946 films, but I will spot it this: It is much better than the 2017 live-action remake.
The New Adventures of Aladdin (Les nouvelles aventures d’Aladin, Arthur Benzaquen, 2015) and The Brand New Adventures of Aladdin (Alad’2, Lionel Steketee, 2018)
The story of “Aladdin” comes from the 1001 Nights. Except it doesn’t. It is one of the so-called “Orphan Stories” inserted by the French translator Antoine Galland, whose version (in twelve volumes, 1704–1717) first introduced the work to European audiences. What this means is that there isn’t an Arabic original of “Aladdin.” It was transmitted orally and recorded in French—as was “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” and parts of “Sinbad the Sailor.”
In popular culture the 1001 Nights are much less a series of stories than an assembly of motifs (a magic carpet, a Genie, a girl that fucks an ape) that can be rearranged into a story. Such as, for example, The Thief of Bagdad (1924). Or The Thief of Bagdad (1940). Or Disney’s Aladdin (1992), which is basically a facsimile of The Thief of Bagdad (1940). Or The New Adventures of Aladdin (2015), which has not much to do with Galland’s tale but is definitely a parody of Disney’s Aladdin.
It’s Christmas Eve, and… wait, what the fuck? Yes, this movie based on Arabic folk literature opens on Christmas Eve, in the present day, where a dishonest department store Santa (Kev Adams) tells the story of Aladdin to entertain a group of pre-adolescents. What follows is an hours-long riff on the Disney version, filled with rap songs and fart jokes. Here is a sampling of the gags to let you into the film’s headspace. The Vizier (Jean-Paul Rouve; remember this name), who has designs on the throne (of course), recites his evil plan to himself. “Are you talking to me?” one of the guards asks. This prompts an exchange that lasts decades. Later, the Genie (Éric Judor) introduces the concept of democracy to the citizens of Baghdad, but a heckler calls into question the spelling and pronunciation of the French word démocratie. “Why,” he asks, “is it démocra-SEE and not démocra-TEE?!”
Most mind-melting of all, in the final confrontation between Aladdin and the Vizier, the Vizier catches our hero off-guard by telling him that he is his father, but Aladdin sees through the ruse and cold-cocks him. In a mid-credits sequence, the princess (Vanessa Guide) and the Sultan (Michel Blanc, of the comedy troupe—you guessed it—Le Splendid) bring out the imprisoned Vizier to mock him for this line, forcing him to repeat it. They go really hard on this guy: The rap song in the credits ends with a chorus of (in English) “Fuck the Vizier!”
I can’t spend too much time on Aladdin because it was successful enough to have a sequel, Alad’2 (2018), a half-pun to show how half-assed it is. Having run out of Disney material, this one has an “original” story, where one Shah Zaman (Jamel Debbouze, the director of Animal Kingdom: Let’s Go Ape, which I covered in an earlier entry) usurps Aladdin’s throne and tries to win over the princess. Aladdin reunites with the Genie but first must save him from a sticky legal situation, wherein the Genie has impregnated every woman of a small village. Aladdin comes to his defense by claiming the Genie is far too ugly to have been the perpetrator. “The mask sold out last Halloween!” If real life had a fourth wall, I would stare glumly at it now.
The jokes of these movies boil down to insipid wordplay and anachronisms, but Alad’2 adds a third category: cameos. Dear Lord, the cameos. The Genie, in his effort to return Aladdin to Baghdad, accidentally sends him across space and time. So he runs into Gérard Depardieu playing Christopher Columbus. He ends up in a nature documentary with famous TV presenter Frédéric Lopez. He winds up in 17th-century France and meets D’Artagnan (the actor is of no consequence; the “cameo” is D’Artagnan). Lastly, as to one untimely born, he appears to the “Snow Queen,” played by Anaïs Delva, the French voice of Elsa (of Arendelle, you know, the famous Elsa). You’d think that they would use this opportunity to make a cheap “Let It Go” joke. And you’d be correct.
Once Shah Zaman is gone (via the modern-day frame narrative, used to hijack the climax), we are treated to one last cameo in the form of the mononymous Tal, a Franco-Israeli singer, who provides the end credits song. Does using an Israeli singer to sign off a story based on an Arabic folktale reek of bad taste to you? Merry Christmas!
Is it better than the Disney remake? The 2019 live-action Aladdin is the very soul of mediocrity, so no, the French movies are not better.
The New Adventures of Cinderella (Les nouvelles aventures de Cendrillon, Lionel Steketee, 2017)
“Cinderella” is one of the tales included in Charles Perrault’s Histoires ou contes du temps passé (1697), a foundational text for the literary versions of European fairy tales. The story had previously appeared in print in Giambattista Basile’s Pentamerone or Tale of Tales (1634), but Perrault added the pumpkin, the glass slippers, and the Fairy Godmother—elements you might consider essential to the Cinderella story. Mainly because Disney did.
Although the average fairy tale is already demented, “Cinderella” in particular seems to be a black hole of feminist grievances. And, personally, I have never found the Cinderella story compelling as a narrative. A whole lot of people disagree—not only Disney himself but Drew Barrymore, Camila Cabello, and the dark forces behind Cinderella: Once Upon a Time in the West. So what pleasures do The New Adventures of Cinderella have to offer us?
Not many! First, this movie has the same creative team as the two Aladdins, so we are thrust into the modern-day world of the hapless Julie (Marilou Berry), an office doormat who is left watching her colleague’s child on her own birthday simply because she is into him (the colleague, that is). Berry played much the same role in Joséphine (2013) and its abominable sequel (2016), rom-coms based on a BD that are completely worthy of this column.
She weaves a modern take on “Cinderella” to entertain the kid, and with it, we achieve full Shrekification. The prince (Arnaud Ducret, who also plays the colleague), searching for a bride, first tries kissing Sleeping Beauty but finds her “disgusting.” Cinderella, accosted by wolves in the forest, diverts their attention to Little Red Riding Hood. The night of the ball, the prince undergoes several speed-dating rounds with his guests, one of whom is Snow White (another is Anaïs Delva—let it go, honey).
This Cinderella not only fully embraces the fractured fairy tale format but injects an unhealthy amount of crass sexual humor, much of it of the “Hey, look up here!” variety. So… the prince likes boobs. A lot. Cinderella specifically asks the Fairy Godmother (in what, by now, has become the standard reading of the text, he is a drag queen) to round out her girls a bit. The prince notices—in part because Cinderella performs a striptease for him—but as the clock strikes midnight, she must leave behind her suddenly too-large brassière, deciding that the prince is a boor, and she can do better (Feminism!),
Cinderella decides to get back at the prince. When he comes calling, she has the Fairy Godmother transform her ugly stepsister into a D-cupped beauty, and she rides off into the sunset with the prince… a least until midnight, when she reverts to her former self, and the prince screams in abject horror (Feminism… ?).
Is it better than the Disney remake? I haven’t seen 2015’s Cinderella, but given that few things are worse than The New Adventures, I will charitably assume the Disney remake is better.
Gavin McDowell is a Hoosier by birth and French by adoption. He received his doctorate in “Languages, History, and Literature of the Ancient World from the Beginning until Late Antiquity” and is currently investigating Aramaic translations of the Bible. He is supremely unqualified to talk about film. For more of his unprovoked movie opinions, see his Letterboxd account.
Bad French Cinema Index
Part 1: French Films with Famous Remakes
Part 2: French Animation
Part 3: Serial (Bad) Weddings
Part 4: Live-Action Fairy Tales
Part 5: The Tuche Family
Part 6: Asterix and Obelix