Joe and Jane Popcorn have embraced Disney and Bill Condon‘s Beauty and the Beast to the tune of $170 million domestic and $350 million worldwide. I’m sorry but I don’t give a shit about this movie at all, and I respect Condon as a guy who’s made films I’ve enjoyed and admired (Gods and Monsters, Kinsey, Mr. Holmes) and presumably will again. I could have attended an all-media screening a few days ago but I “forgot” about it — i.e., never wanted to see it in the first place and embraced the first distraction that came along.

What am I missing? Nothing…nothing at all. I am not a lemming, and I don’t do cliffs. I won’t see it or stream it, and I won’t lose a blink of sleep.

Knowing Disney and their corporate factory-product sensibility, I strongly sensed that the view of The Verge‘s Tasha Robinson would be my own: “[This is] largely a frustrating clone of the original [animated] movie — same songs, same script, often even the exact same shot choices — but it replaces every moment of authentic or moving emotion with bombast and hyperbolic overemphasis. It slows down the flow of the familiar music by jamming in extra phrases, and builds up the energy by jamming nonstop, busy action onto the screen. It’s a garish, strident film, as well as a profoundly unnecessary one.”