Review by Dennis D. McDonald

Sometimes its spectacular animation tends to overwhelm this convoluted tale that combines childhood trauma, teenage angst, and escape-to-the-metaverse-adventure — plus music.

Unlike the director’s Mirai and The Girl Who Leapt Through Time the story suffers from a lack of a strong central character. Mousy Suzu is a teenager still grieving from the loss of her mother. She escapes to an internet based metaverse named U that is wildly popular worldwide. There she adopts the immensely popular persona of the beautifu Belle whose singing makes her — online — a worldwide sensation. There also she meets a strange beast-like character who she suspects also harbors secret pain.

All this takes place against a background of real-world emotional upset, school-based silliness, and a cold homelife.

Oddly, the most affecting moments are some of the simplest where real-world Suzu interacts with her friends and schoolmates. There are even some flashes of silly teenage humor that harken back to some of the director’s earlier works which were also fantasies but which had a much more affecting and engaging emotional core.

What’s missing with Belle, I think, is the emotional resonance that we have come to expect from Pixar movies that undergo such long gestation in story development before major animation begins. In Belle the plot points never seem to congeal completely. The turbulent emotional ending seems unintegrated with the rest of the film.

Also, I rented the English language version. While the dubbing is good, the lack of synchronization between voice and mouth movements is sometimes distracting expecially in the film’s more intimate moments. I usually prefer to watch anime in the original Japanese with English subtitles but I’m not sure if that would have made a difference.

Postscript: its interesting to compare Belle with Bubble. Both incorporate fairy tale elements, Belle with Beauty and the Beast, Bubble with The Little Mermaid. Both incorporate music and singing as major story elements. Both are extravegantly animated. What Bubble does, though, is concentrate much more on a story line built around constant action which effectively overshadows the lack of a really strong or original emotional core.

Review copyright (c) 2022 by Dennis D. McDonald

Media that incorporate “surreal” elements: