Belle (anime movie review by Mark Kermode).

Mark Kermode gives his thoughts on the English-language adaptation of the anime movie Belle.

Mamoru Hosoda’s animated scientific fiction film Belle (“The Dragon and the Freckled Princess”) was written and directed by Mamoru Hosoda and produced by Studio Chizu. It is loosely based on Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont’s 1756 French fairy tale Beauty and the Beast – but a SF anime take on the theme.

Through her avatar in the futuristic virtual world of ‘U,’ a bashful high school girl secretly becomes a worldwide singing phenomenon.

This bad boy became the third-highest-grossing Japanese film of last year.