Movie Review: Disney's 'Beauty and the Beast' is animated tale as old as time....
Directed by Gary Trousdale (“Shrek the Halls,” “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”) and Kirk Wise (“Atlantis: The Lost Empire”) and
written by Linda Woolverton (“The Lion
King”) and 11 other co-writers, “Beauty
and the Beast” is an enchanting and awe-inspiring love story centered on
the beautiful Belle and the monstrous-looking Beast.
The film's story is simple and straightforward, even being
introduced with a traditional-sounding prologue (narrated by M*A*S*H alum David Ogden Stiers, who
also plays Cogsworth) which sets up the characters and situations.
“Once upon a time, in a
faraway land, a young prince lived in a shining castle. Although he had
everything his heart desired, the prince was spoiled, selfish, and unkind. But then,
one winter's night, an old beggar woman came to the castle and offered him a
single rose in return for shelter from the bitter cold.”
The nameless Prince, disgusted by the old woman's appearance,
refuses the exchange not once but twice,
only to repent when the beggar woman morphs into a beautiful young
woman. He tries to apologize, but the enchantress has seen how selfish and
unkind the Prince is.
As punishment, she casts a spell, transforming him into a
hideous Beast and his once beautiful castle into a scary-looking haunted
edifice. Additionally, all of the Prince's household staff members are turned
into non-human but animated objects - clocks, candelabra, wardrobes, footstools,
dishes and silverware.
The enchantress gives
the Prince one chance for redemption - the rose she originally offered him in
her old woman guise is a magic rose which, as the narrator tells us,
"would bloom until his 21st year. If he could learn to love another, and
earn her love in return by the time the last petal fell, then the spell would
be broken. If not, he would be doomed to remain a beast for all time. As the
years passed, he fell into despair and lost all hope. For who could ever learn
to love a beast?"
This is a rhetorical question, because as the narrator's last words
are echoing in our minds and the movie title fades in, Trousdale, Wise,
lyricist Howard Ashman and composer Alan Menken whisk us a few years forward
into time and introduce us to the "Beauty" of the tale, a young woman
named Belle (Paige O'Hara) whose love of books and desire to not conform to the
expectations of "small provincial life" in a small French town mark
her as a misfit.
Belle: [singing] I want adventure in the great wide somewhere. I
want it more than I can tell. And for once it might be grand, to have someone
understand... I want so much more than they've got planned.
Not only is Belle considered "rather odd" because she
has "her nose stuck in a book" and lives with her loving (if rather
goofy) inventor father Maurice (Rex Everhart), but also because she's the only
single young woman who is not interested in the handsome but oafish hunter and
man-about-town Gaston (Richard White).
Gaston, who is as conceited and mean as he is buff, has vowed to
marry Belle, but she has, much to his chagrin, other ideas.
Gaston: This is the day your dreams come
true.
Belle: What do you know about my dreams,
Gaston
Gaston: Plenty! Here, picture this: A rustic
hunting lodge, my latest kill roasting on the fire, and my little wife
massaging my feet, while the little ones play on the floor with the dogs. We'll
have six or seven.
Belle: Dogs?
Gaston: No, Belle! Strapping boys, like me!
Belle: Imagine that.
Gaston: And do you know who that little wife
will be?
Belle: Let me think...
Gaston: You, Belle!
Belle: Gaston, I'm-I'm speechless. I really
don't know what to say.
Gaston: Say you'll marry me!
Belle:
I'm very sorry, Gaston... but... but I just don't deserve you!
Belle's rejection irks the heck out of Gaston, who does not
understand the meaning of the word no and
is more determined than ever to get his way, even if he has to be mean and
underhanded to do so.
As Gaston recovers from the public humiliation of having been
turned down in front of the entire town, Maurice takes a fateful trip to an
inventors' fair where he wants to show off his latest Rube Goldberg
contraption.
After taking a wrong turn at a crossroads and a scary trek with
his horse, Philippe, Maurice arriving at a forbidding-looking castle, where he
not only meets the enchanted clock Cogsworth and the candle-holder Lumiere (the
late Jerry Orbach) but the castle's unwelcoming Master....the monstrous-looking
Beast (Robby Benson).
Fortunately for Maurice, Philippe makes his way back to Belle,
who then rides back to the ugly castle, where she finds that her dad has been
locked up in a damp and cold cell by the seemingly cruel Beast. In a bid to
gain Maurice's freedom, Belle makes a deal with the ugly-looking creature: if
the Beast lets her father go, Belle will remain in the castle as a
prisoner...forever.
This being a fairy tale, and a love story one at that, we can be
certain that the movie's central question - For who could ever learn to love a beast?- will be resolved and
that the various plot threads will be neatly tied up in a "happily ever
after" ending.
A True Classic Though there's very little in the story that's unpredictable, “Beauty and the Beast” is one of the
best films ever made by Walt Disney Pictures' animators and clearly deserves
its unprecedented Best Picture nomination.
Part of the credit for the quality of “Beauty and the Beast” - which had a shorter-than-usual
production schedule - is owed to the producers' decision to work from a
completed screenplay and avoid production cost overruns. The old way of
creating a movie from storyboards and then writing a script would have slowed
down the process and increased the studio's expenses, so Don Hahn asked
screenwriter Woolverton and the other writers to do a finished screenplay and
then go from there.
Another big plus was executive producer/lyricist Howard Ashman's
insistence that “Beauty and the Beast”
be approached as a Broadway musical. This eventually led Disney to adapt
the film as a real Broadway stage production several years later.
Not only did Ashman's concept give “Beauty and the Beast” its structure and format, but it
influenced its casting of New York-based theater actors such as Jerry Orbach
and Richard White, who were not only good line reading thespians but were great
song-and-dance artists.
Collaborating - for the last time, as it turned out - with
composer Alan Menken, Ashman penned such songs as the operetta-styled Belle,
the hilarious Gaston, the lovely duet Something There, the
Maurice Chevalier/Busby Berkeley show-stopper Be Our Guest and the
indelible “Beauty and the Beast”, which not only are there to entertain
but also handle much of the character development and plot exposition.
Because Ashman was dying of AIDS, Don Hahn took the entire cast
and crew to a hotel upstate New York which wasn't far from the lyricist and
executive producer's home. The songs, including one which was deleted from the
1991 version (Human Again) were finished shortly before Ashman passed
away. (The film is dedicated to Howard Ashman.)
The 2010 Blu-ray Diamond Edition
Re-Release On October 3, 2010, Walt Disney Video
re-released “Beauty and the Beast” in
a three-disc "Diamond Edition" Blu-ray/DVD combination pack in one of
those "for a limited time" reissue periods.
If you are familiar with Blu-ray sets from Disney, you can
expect to get more than just the original 1991 version of “Beauty and the Beast”, because the Diamond
Edition contains two additional versions - the 2002 Special Edition (which
was altered and cleaned up for the IMAX/DVD edition) and a Picture-in-Picture
"compare and contrast" look at the 1991 theatrical edition which
shows a "rough draft" of storyboards and rough animations of the
movie in a PIP square within a "normal" presentation of “Beauty and the Beast”.
The extra features on the Blu-ray edition include not only the
usual audio commentary track, a Disney Sing Along track option and the
aforementioned variations of the film, but also a separate Blu-ray disc with
behind-the-scenes featurettes, a rather lame Jordin Sparks video of the title
tune and various kid-friendly games and options.
For those who haven't yet upgraded to Blu-ray players or whose
kids might want to watch this movie on the family minivan's DVD player, the
three-disc package comes with a standard DVD, presumably the 2002 Platinum
Edition with its "classic DVD" features.
Not only does “Beauty
and the Beast” look and sound nicer on Blu-ray (or on DVD, for that
matter), but it is still a very entertaining and emotionally moving movie.
Blu-ray Technical Specifications
Video
- Codec: MPEG-4 AVC (24.06 Mbps)
- Resolution: 1080p
- Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
- Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Audio
- English: DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
- French: Dolby Digital 5.1 (640 kbps)
- Spanish: Dolby Digital 5.1 (640 kbps)
Subtitles
- English, English SDH, French, Spanish
Discs
- 50GB Blu-ray Disc
- Three-disc set (2 BDs, 1 DVD)
- DVD copy
- Bonus View (PiP)
- BD-Live
Packaging
- Slipcover in original pressing
Playback
- Region free
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