Beauty and the Beast
What can I say about this film? It's amazing from start to finish and isn't just my favourite Disney, animated or musical films, it's one of my favourite films ever! If anyone knows about my other blog RumbelleForever, I think you'll know how much I love the Beauty and the Beast story and Once Upon A Time's adaptation of it, which I absolutely love! When I found out the show was adapting the story, I was just so happy and when I watched it, it exceeded my expectations! OK, back to the Disney film before I go completely off-topic! I think you know the story by now, prince turns into beast, falls in love with a pretty young woman who's the object of the villain's objections, magic, romance, death and more magic and a happily ever after, we've all heard of it before! The way it shows these clichés is fantastic, the romance is just perfect since we don't even know how long it took for Belle and the Beast to fall in love (most likely months!).
The two main characters are very interesting and Belle isn't the generic love interest or damsel in distress, she's independent, eccentric, reads and doesn't take any crap from anybody (You gotta love it when she argues with the beast leaving him dumbfounded!) voiced by the amazing Paige O'Hara who that sweet, youthful yet firm voice I could imagine Belle having. She is my favourite animated character ever, she's actually a good role model for girls. Also, I love Robbie Benson as the Beast, so menacing yet soft & vulnerable and he actually has a good singing voice(yes, that is his normal voice when he's transformed into the prince!)! Whenever I pictured the Beast before I saw the film when I was 7 in 2002 when the special edition DVD was released, the design was exactly how I pictured it when I heard the story, sort of werewolf/lion/bear-like. The design of the prince thinking about it kind of reminds me of a young Robert Carlyle (yes, this is because of Once Upon A Time again) with red hair and being taller!
The villain, good God I love Gaston, just the antithesis of an archetypal Disney villain, young, selfish, the popular guy in town, initially you'd think he was the hero! Richard White's voice is perfect, especially his singing (you may not know he was the Phantom in Yeston/Kopit's version of The Phantom of the Opera!) I actrually heard Rupert Everett auditioned to voice him but he was told he wasn't arrogant enough, quite ironic considering he voiced Charming in the Shrek series who was exactly like Gaston, even down to wanting to kill the 'monster' of the story because he was in the way of what he wanted! His sidekick LeFou also manages to make me laugh at times!
I adore the sidekicks, they just make the film with their comedy and their individuality not just because they're household object. I mean, Lumiere's like the funny, romantic yet kind guy who's a great entertainer, Mrs Potts is the kind motherly type of woman and Cogsworth's the proper, cynical and pompous yet kind-hearted man! Also, what I love is they know it takes time for people to fall in love instead of making it thrust upon and therefore making it contrived shit!
The songs are unbelievably amazing, it's like they were written for a Broadway show, like Gaston, Beauty and the Beast and of course Be Our Guest, written by the legends Alan Menken and Howard Ashman! My favourite one would have to be the title song since the melody's beautiful and Angela Lansbury's voice shines in it! Also, the only version i know is the one with Human Again which was added in which I loved since it showed the curse from the household objects' perspective, also wouldn't there be virtually no household objects if it weren't for the cursed servants? That ,may be just nitpicking but still, I think it's really creative.
Also the animation is just amazing and very beautiful to look at, the castle is just so Gothic and I can see all the detail put into it and I love the idea of the prologue being in stained glass, creative for the artistic approach, as well as the narrative! My main highlight has got to be the transformation scene, I was left jaw dropped when I watched it since it was all animated by the Disney animator legend himself Glen Keane, with the swelling and uplifting score by Alan Menken perfectly fitting the scene!
Overall, this film is just perfect, even after 20 years it still looks like it was made recently and is just so beautiful with well-developed characters, stellar songs, a flowing story and narrative with a lesson for children. I don't see any flaws and if you have the chance to now, go and see it or buy the DVD or Blu-Ray of the Diamond Edition! This was the first ever animated film to be nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars so it definitely got to a lot of people that this just isn't a cartoon, but a work of cinematic art and is the perfect film to have been adapted on Broadway, which I went to see a few years ago in a UK tour which was also amazing! So yeah, this film is truly a tale as old as time!
By the way, don't watch The Enchanted Christmas or Belle's Magical World, they're awful and are a waste of money and don't even follow the story of the first film!
