(CNN) "Beauty and the Beast" became the centerpiece of Disney's animation renaissance, and the first animated film to secure an Oscar nomination for best picture. A quarter-century later, the live-action version sumptuously holds up to that legacy, delicately expanding upon and updating the original in enormously crowd-pleasing fashion.

Director Bill Condon (a musical veteran who worked on "Dreamgirls" and "Chicago") certainly hasn't reinvented the wheel. Still, "Beauty" rolls along like a well-oiled machine, augmented by new music, fleshed-out backstories for the principals and Josh Gad's scene-stealing turn as the toadying LeFou, whose much-ballyhooed gayness -- an overblown controversy if there ever was one -- is played with a combination of sweetness and subtlety.

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Visually speaking, not everything is perfection, from the design of the Beast himself ("Downton Abbey's" Dan Stevens) to the revised computer-generated look of certain members of his menagerie of servants, voiced by the likes of Ewan McGregor, Ian McKellan, Emma Thompson and Audra McDonald.

For the most part, though, the action hums along, instilling renewed emotional heft in the film's last act. And while "The Jungle Book" was already a major hit, this "Beast" looks destined to dwarf those returns, with parents weaned on the story likely to eagerly share it with their kids.

Most prominently, "Harry Potter's" Emma Watson cuts a radiant figure as Belle, the village girl who dreams of a life beyond her small provincial town. While Watson might not possess what amounts to a Broadway belt, like the stars of "La La Land," she's more than adequate on the score, and brings a genuine richness to the romance despite the impediments associated with gazing into the eyes of a towering CGI character.

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