I also saw Belle and…man, there is a lot to unpack with this movie. Granted, it's been several weeks since I saw it, so it's not as fresh in my mind and some of my emotions have died down, but let's give it a shot.
! So between this movie, Summer Wars, and Digimon, it seems Hosoda has a real fascination digital/internet/virtual reality worlds. Summer Wars was one thing since he got to take the premise from Digimon, flesh it out a bit, and make it his own, but with Belle it kind of feels like he's just retreading old ground. I mean, if it's a topic he's interested in, I guess there's nothing that says he can't or shouldn't do it, especially if he has something new to say or do with it. And, to his credit, Hosoda does explore some new facets about the Internet, particularly fame, anonymity and cyber-bullying. And while the visuals of the Internet world are beautiful, I remember being rather confused about how the U world even worked. Like, how much of the visuals were metaphorical and how much are the characters actually seeing and experiencing on their screens. And how exactly do these Internet determine a person's identity anyway?
! Well, anyway, the Internet stuff is basically one half of the story. The other half is set in the real world and deals with the main girl's (okay, her name's Suzu. I had to look it up) relationships with her father, her friend, this really pretty popular girl, and a boy she's developing an attraction. And, honestly, this second half is where the movie really shines for me. I think Hosoda has always been great at telling stories about relatively down-to-earth people in down-to-earth environments and portraying the emotions of their personal struggles. I think that's where his strength really lies as a storyteller. That's why Wolf Children was so great, because it mostly was just a simple story about a mother raising her two children, who just so happened to be able to turn into wolves, and the fantasy element fit into it perfectly. And while the fantastical fantasy/sci-fi/Internet stuff from his movies isn't bad (for the most part) it just doesn't feel as well-thought-out. It's almost like he feels he needs to include some fantastic element or else he'll lose the audience's attention.
! But hey, this was supposed to be a Beauty and the Beast retelling, so let's get to that. So while Suzu becomes an acclaimed Internet celebrity (becoming "Belle") she encounters the Beast, who is some uber-strong Internet player (because I guess you can fight in the U world too, why not?) and is also very bitter and angry, and Belle tries to figure out who he is. So while watching it you may think this story will be about how Belle and Beast fall in love and you may think the Beast will turn out to be one of two in Suzu's real life. But no, that's not where the story goes at all, and there's no way you'll ever guess who the Beast (or, if you do, I would be absolutely amazed).
! Spoilers for who the Beast is:
! >! So it turns out the Beast is this random kid who, up until his reveal, was not an established character (I think he was alluded to in one or two blink-and-you-miss-it scenes, but otherwise we knew nothing about him). And it turns out the reason he's bitter and angry (aside from the fact that every Hosoda movie has to have an angsty teenager, evidently) is that he comes from an abusive household and his fairly regularly beats him and his brother.
! Now, I know we've all talked about how the third act of Hosoda's film tend to the weak link, but…man this third act is something else. It might just be me, but personally I think this is the most ill-conceived third act Hosoda has made yet. As I said, the true identity of the Beast and whole domestic abuse subplot really comes out of nowhere and has basically nothing to do with the rest of the movie. To add to that, domestic abuse is an incredibly delicate subject, so if you want to be put that in your story you really have to know what you're doing. And apparently Suzu's big solution to this revelation is to track down the Beast to his home (as fast as she can, apparently, even though there's no specific countdown or deadline she needs to meet) and then conveniently run into the Beast and his brother while they're outside and then protect them from their abusive father who just...backs off for some reason. And that's it.
! So what exactly did that accomplish? I mean, I guess it showed that the brothers that there are people in the world who care, but it doesn't really do anything to resolve their domestic abuse problem in the long run. I'm assuming they're just gonna go back to living with their abusive dad who will continue to beat them. I dunno, maybe Suzu gave them the confidence and courage to face it going forward? I don't know, it just feels like Hosoda completely wrote himself into a corner on this one.
! I guess the only thing that really ties the third act to the rest of the movie is how Suzu finally makes peace with the idea of her mother risking her life for a random stranger, which is fair enough, I guess. But man, this could have been done so much better.
I think the big problem with this movie though is that it doesn't know what it wants to be. Or, rather, it wants to be too many things at once. On the one hand it wants to be a retelling of a Beauty and the Beast, but then it also wants to be about Internet fame and cyber-bulling, but it also wants to be about a young girl overcoming a personal tragedy, and it also wants to squeeze a romance sub-plot, and then BAM! in the third act it wants to be about domestic abuse. I think maybe two or three of these things would have been fine, but the way it came out, Hosoda really overreached himself.
! I dunno, maybe I'm being a little too hard on this movie. There is still a lot of stuff in it that's really good, but with each Hosoda movie that comes out, I'm hoping it'll be the one that recaptures the magic of Wolf Children. But with each one that comes out, I'm finding that scenario to be increasingly unlikely.
! So yeah, I'm pretty much with you Robby. I really, really, really want to love Hosoda's movies, but it's starting to feel like Wolf Children was the one truly great movie he had in him.