SummaryThis 'tale as old as time' follows the adventures of Belle, a bright young woman who finds herself imprisoned in a castle of a mysterious beast. With the assistance of the castle's enchanted staff, a delightful and tender romance develops between these two unlikely friends and Belle soon learns the most important lesson of all - that tru...
SummaryThis 'tale as old as time' follows the adventures of Belle, a bright young woman who finds herself imprisoned in a castle of a mysterious beast. With the assistance of the castle's enchanted staff, a delightful and tender romance develops between these two unlikely friends and Belle soon learns the most important lesson of all - that tru...
Wised-up as well as traditional, with a striking and detailed look and a strong storyline, it is sure to charm a wide audience both now and for a long time to come.
There is no such thing as a ‘perfect movie’ but the (original) Beauty and the Beast is one of the few that gets as close as possible. The story is as its tagline describes – “a tale as old as time”, the love that can seemingly never be, a plot that is so good, it spawned countless other stories. And it teaches universal life lessons for kids, such as not judging people based on their appearance or the dangers of mob think. It blows my mind how the movie is a phenomenal musical but doesn’t sacrifice plot or characters as musicals generally are forced to compromise on. They even communicate a sense of time with the seasonal changes. The animation is hand drawn and harkens back to a time that the people behind these movies actually cared about their craft and I recommend the 4K version with a QLED TV to get the max out of the animation. The music is from the golden era of Disney – that is to say, even the songs without singing are iconic and memorable, able to evoke emotion from even the hardest person. The voice acting is great, bringing a storybook to life and people playing off their unique characters in fun ways. The movie deserved the Oscars it was nominated for (back when the Oscars were still relevant anyway) and the fact it created a whole award for animated feature proves that Beauty and the Beast is a movie of true timeless quality.
“Beauty and the Beast”, one of the hallmarks of Disney’s renaissance era, is an animated masterpiece that excels in utilizing complex characters and aesthetics while remaining simple at its core. Combined with an unforgettable lineup of songs (such as “Be Our Guest”, “Gaston”, and the movie’s namesake) and wrapped within a beautifully-drawn world, the film’s narrative has an excellent stage to unfold on within the streamlined duration of only eighty-seven minutes. Concerning the plot, the story opens up with a narration chronicling a fateful curse that enshrouded the castle of a selfish prince and all who lived there, setting the stage for the motivations of the film’s first main character. It then transitions to a musical sequence introducing both the second protagonist, a beautiful young woman named Belle, and her current source of conflict: the town’s brash “hero”, Gaston. After encouraging her father Maurice (the town’s resident “crackpot”) with his current invention, the story continues to follow his journey as he eventually loses himself within the nearby woods before happening upon the cursed castle; forced to intrude to wait out the inclement weather and ravenous wolves that pursued him. Shortly after discovering that the twisted bastion is home to many enchanted beings, he is confronted by their beastly master and thrown into the dungeon for his trespass. Back in town, Belle learns of this emergency shortly after turning down Gaston’s marriage proposal and rushes to save her father. Upon finding him and the intimidating Beast, she bargains for his life in exchange for her own, and the Beast agrees. The two understandably don’t see eye-to-eye, and Belle eventually breaks her accord and leaves after she visited the single place of the castle the Beast forbade her to go: witnessing the magical rose (the film’s visual hourglass for the curse) in the Beast’s possession. Quickly finding herself at the mercy of the same pack of wolves that hunted her father, the Beast swiftly steps in to protect her, driving them off at the price **** wound. It is at this point where Belle’s contempt for the Beast begins to soften, with his anger toward her diminishing in turn as the two gradually grow closer as the seasons change. Ultimately falling in love with her, the Beast freely releases Belle to see her father again despite suspecting that she will never return if given the choice. As Gaston’s sinister plans come to a head, the story soon reaches its climax with a battle to save the Beast and his servants from both the frenzied villagers led by Gaston and the curse itself becoming permanent.Easily one of the strongest points of the film is its use of meticulous development to simultaneously enrich the characters of each scene while setting up future story points to unfold. Several examples of which surround the character of Gaston and the actions he carries out to ensnare Belle: starting from his abrupt proposal and delusions of how an ideal marriage should work and culminating with his scheme to use the imprisonment of Maurice in an insane asylum as a ploy to “win” her hand. These situations not only push the plot forward, but allow Gaston to exhibit a more monstrous personality to feature as a foil to the Beast’s more gentlemanly mannerisms as the story nears its **** mentioned previously, the film also does an exceptional job of pacing itself within the confines of less than an hour and a half of runtime. No scene is wasted on needless exposition or lollygagging, and the musical numbers that are neatly woven in here and there are purposely meaningful to the narrative. If anything, a little more time would have been welcome if it was added in the right **** art style and early integration of 3D animation is stunning to behold, with the facial features in particular lending that extra modicum of depth to each character in compliment to the strong voice acting from the likes of Paige O’Hara, Robby Benson, Angela Lansbury, and Richard **** conclusion, Disney’s original version of “Beauty and the Beast” will always stand out as one of the company’s most iconic films for its timeless combination of unforgettable components. It is a shining example of how well a simple story and premise can juxtapose with more mature concepts at a level that can appeal to (and entertain) every range of viewer.
Beauty and the Beast reaches back to an older and healthier Hollywood tradition in which the best writers, musicians and filmmakers are gathered for a project on the assumption that a family audience deserves great entertainment, too.
Disney's new full-length animated feature, Beauty and the Beast, is more than a return to classic form, it's a delightfully satisfying modern fable, a near-masterpiece that draws on the sublime traditions of the past while remaining completely in sync with the sensibility of its time.
This movie is without doubt the best animated movie of all time. The artistry was perfect. I was spellbound at the animated sequences to the songs "Be Our Guest" and "Beauty and the Beast" especially. The characters were very well drawn, and because of the dark and colourful backgrounds, the film looked beautiful. The songs are fantastic. Another movie with great songs is "The Hunchback of Notre Dame"(which has the best beginning to a Disney movie). In fact, all the Alan Menken scores are brilliant, with the exception of Home On The Range, which is one of the weaker Disney efforts. My personal favourites, were the songs I just mentioned, and "Gaston" was great fun too. The incidental music was the best in any Disney movie, and that is the same with the other Menken scores. The music in the transformation of the Beast was phenomenal, as well as the animation, and reminded me of the last movement of Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique, which is really frightening. Another Disney with great incidental music is "The Lion King". The story is quite simply one of the best love stories ever, and the characters are wonderful. Belle was voiced beautifully by Paige O'Hara, who has a beautiful singing voice. I love Belle, she is beautiful, clever and strong, and is one of the best Disney characters for those reasons. Gaston was made into a complex villain, and quite narcissistic(great idea Disney). When he was nasty he was quite frightening, and Richard White can really sing. Jerry Orbach and David Ogden Stiers were really entertaining as Lumiere and Cogsworth,(I just love how witty, elegant and debonair Lumiere is) and Angela Lansbury gives a brilliant rendition of the title song. The best voice over was that of the Beast, who was very frightening, and there were some parts that were truly sensitive. Why are some people fussed about him as a human? Remember, true beauty comes from within. In conclusion, an essential to your Disney collection with a very poignant ending. 10/10. Bethany Cox
Beauty and the Beast is the greatest animated masterpiece through its lovely charm and music which tells a beautiful love story that comes from a tale as old as time.
Beauty the Beast works to an extent. Visually the appeal takes time to develop. It's a dark, deary and uninteresting first several minutes, and I wouldn't understand how that would attract children to become immersed. However past that the film starts to develop a flame, but just as it does we get a super long look as Gaston, and that's all we really learn about him. The pace keeps getting killed. He's a very one sided somewhat misunderstood neutral character that is merely guilty of not having the intelligence to understand what is really happening, and the comedic elements concerning his sidekicks fail terribly. The film tries to force ideas and concepts, but the execution often pulls away from what they are attempting to convey.
However the atmosphere, songs and voice acting are some of the best Disney have to offer. I just think with the entire running time, they could have easily put more umph and actual plot devices into this, especially concerning Gaston.
It's not my type of film, but I can see objectively it doesn't really have anything offensively bad. It's just not a very inventive take on this romance story.
I'm not a Disney kid, but I do like a lot of their animated movies. The ones I don't like are usually the ones with too many songs in them, or some overt message. This is one of those. It's not for me, but that doesn't always stop me from enjoying a good animated movie. This is not the case here. What normally makes a good Disney flick is overdone here for me. It's one of the points at which Disney films started becoming tedious if you aren't a kid, and specifically a girl.