TL;DR Would I recommend Belle?: yes.
This one is a weird one to review and I'm shocked at how polarizing the reviews are for what I'd call a decent film.
STORY 4/10: The story, to be honest, is rough. There are a lot of interesting ideas, but they are poorly put together, and some decisions are just baffling with several plotholes. The very obvious Beauty and the Beast parallel seems kind of ham fisted, and is subverted kind of pointlessly. The denouement is also much shorter than it should have been and leaves a bunch of things unresolved. There's also some random shounen b.s. for some reason. That being said, the story definitely has some things to say, with most of it getting across more or less successfully.
ART 8/10: The art is pretty good. It's definitely an interesting blend of 2d and 3d animation. The 2d animation is quite good, though probably not as good and definitely not as consistent as Hosoda's other films. The 3d animation is also quite good with Jin Kim giving Belle a very Disney look, and people like Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart contributing to the design of the world. There's a common issue of 3d in anime looking uncanny, but it works well here.
SOUND 10/10: Definitely the strongest point of the movie. The soundtrack is incredible, and sets the tone for the film. This film is almost a musical due to characters singing being a major plot point of the movie, but there are just a few too many songs to really call it a musical. It could have been a more successful if they leaned into that a little more. Both the English and Japanese voice cast are also pretty comparable. I would probably recommend those who aren't fluent in Japanese watched it dubbed, as there is a lot of layered audio, and it can be difficult to read subtitles for several different things at once.
CHARACTER 7/10: The characters are alright. I think there are probably too many characters, so the characters in it aren't able to be developed as deeply, with Ryuu being particularly underdeveloped. Suzu in the beginning is not particularly likable, though definitely develops, though maybe a little too fast, and incomplete due to the brevity of the denouement. Also, Hiroka is simply not a great person. She develops and becomes better, but doesn't develop enough to become likable.
ENJOYMENT 8/10: Despite all its problems, Belle is definitely paced quite well and it's sound and visuals come together to create quite an experience that keeps you on your toes and not quite sure what will come next. It also has an excellent example of the awkwardness of highschool romance, which is easily the funniest part of the film.
OVERALL 8/10: As I said in the intro, I would recommend Belle, just have tempered expectations. Also, a sidenote is it gets pretty dark later in the film. The thing that prompted me to write this review is seeing some of the incredibly low reviews I saw here, which I thought was unwarranted. It's a decent film, superficially very reminiscent of Summer Wars, while also being one of Hosoda's weaker works.
