As the new version of Beauty and the Beast just came out in theatres, I thought it would be quite interesting to look at review of when the original movie came out in the 90s. In the Review/Film; Disney's 'Beauty and the Beast', Janet Maslin strongly admires the movie as a step forward in the Disney company. Janet Maslin is an American journalist that is best known for her film and literary critic for The New York Times. In this review, she aims for an audience of many ages, and specifically to convince people to go and see the magic happen. In this article, Maslin utilizes descriptive diction in order to illustrate diction in the reader’s head, and key background knowledge of the subject, which helps establish her purpose in getting people out to go see this movie.
Throughout the article, Maslin is able use descriptive, and romantic diction which helps to paint a picture in the reader’s head. In the beginning she says, “No live-action musical could ever match the miracles of anthropomorphism that occur here, or the fantastically sweeping scale. Nor could a live-action work achieve this mixture of elaborate, painstaking technique and perfect simplicity” (Maslin). By using words such as ‘elaborate’, ‘painstaking’ and even ‘anthropomorphism’, she is able to establish her dictions for the rest of the text, truly showing just how visually appealing and great this movie really is. Without her diction, the article would lack any sort persuasion to get people to see the movie. Maslin is also able to bring background knowledge about Disney as a company. She says, “With "Beauty and the Beast," a tender, seamless and even more ambitious film than its predecessor, Disney has done something no one has done before: combine the latest computer animation techniques with the best of Broadway” (Maslin). By including information about the past years of Disney she is proving to her audience that she truly does know what she is talking about, and has lots of experience in the subject. This strengthens her ethos and truly qualifies her opinion as something worth listening to and taking into consideration.
In my opinion, I believe Maslin successfully conveyed her purpose in both a simplistic and sophisticated way. It was interesting to see varying opinions as compared to the original movie and the 2017 version. I thought that this article would be very fitting as the new version did just come out. I actually truly enjoy Janet Maslin’s writing and plan on reading more articles by her.
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