If it’s all the same, I’d rather not be your guest for this
outing.
Considered by many to be the absolute peak of the Disney
Renaissance of the late 80s to late 90s, “Beauty and the Beast” has carved out
a legacy with the company so powerful, impacting, and iconic that you’d be
hard-pressed to remember their corporate image without it at this point.
The tale of a cursed prince seeking true love to break the
spell that has transformed him into a literal monster by winning the heart of
the young maiden Belle was an odd creature in the place of the Animated Cannon,
adhering to the Disney fairy tale tradition almost unabashedly yet doing so in a
manner both ahead of its time and so seamlessly integrated into the core
storytelling that it’s elegance dwarfs that of modern Disney films trying to
desperately break mold to varying degrees of success.
Belle was intelligent, kind, and free-spirited but
no-nonsense; she wasn’t fighting to break the constraints of her life to
blindly experience what she has no understanding of but simply figuring out how
to roll with life wherever it took her, defining her story with the knowledge
she gathers along the way and refusing to accept that which falls below her
reasonable standards of human decency.
Unlike most romantically inclined Disney films, the
relationship between its title characters was not smooth or pretty and it fell
upon the male lead, known primarily as the Beast, to overcome his own
reprehensible nature in order to sell to Belle that he’s a worthwhile human
being, appearance truly be damned.
Beast learns the value of human decency and the shallowness
of surface level beauty through his courtship of a strong-minded independent
woman with standards in a romance set across a longer chronological time frame
than the days that typically encompass the format while facing an outside world
that doesn’t necessarily practice the same values that he must adhere to in
order to earn back his true appearance.
It’s the entry of the Renaissance era that easily holds up
the most; a film so good it played a major role in blowing open the doors for
the arguable merits of animation for winning best picture amongst observers of
the Academy of Arts and Sciences and is commonly viewed as one of Disney’s best
films to date, something that I would more or less concur with.
Outside of one or two other entries that will get their time
in the light however, it may also have left the absolute least wiggle room for
any sort of sequel.
The follow-ups in question seemed to even be aware of this
at the conception stage and thusly, “The Enchanted Christmas” and “Belle’s
Magical World” serve as interquels to their predecessor set during the time of
Belle’s stay in the Beast’s castle but before the end of the movie.
Conceptually, this kind of undermines the narrative of the
original’s reliance of long term development so the best foot has definitely
not been put forward. Unfortunately it only gets worse from there.
The Enchanted Christmas
To quote BoJack Horseman, “Special Holiday episodes are always stupid; cynical cash grabs by greedy corporations looking to squeeze a few extra points out of sentimental claptrap for idiots who would rather spend their Christmas watching a fake family on TV than trying to have a conversation with their own.”
I say this in substantial agreement with said statement
above while acknowledging an absolutely unabashed love of Christmas specials
and all of their tropes both good and bad. This should have given “The
Enchanted Christmas” an extra point for me no matter where it ended up on the
scale of quality and to be fair, the film is far from the worst of what I’ve
seen thus far and what I’m to encounter in this little experiment.
Comparative judgment however only saves the film so much and
despite having admittedly more production put into the film than expected for
what it is, That can’t save it from being the outright bore it wants to
ultimately disguise itself from being.
As its title would suggest, the movie takes place during the
Christmas season of Belle’s duration as the Beast’s guest.
Her efforts to spread cheer to the diligently working and
cursed castle staff are met with overhead resistance by Beast, who despises Christmas
because his lair is located in the land of writer contrivances, the overlord of
which decreeing that despite a rather cut and dry telling of the circumstances
that have cursed him and his staff, it had to be retroactively added that these
events occurred on Christmas day.
There have certainly been worse retcons delivered through
these sequels but this one is slightly laughable more in just how unnecessary it
is.
The entire narrative thrust of the “Beauty and the Beast” is
defrosting the heart of its titular male love interest and getting him to
gradually see the error of his cruelty. Additionally, by virtue of framing the
film as an interlude between the acts of this story, “The Enchanted Christmas”
is more or less locked off from encompassing full circle character development.
So why not capitalize on the tools made available to you and use Christmas as a
genuine tool up Belle’s sleeve?
The irony of spreading fear and hatred with a physical
appearance inciting it upon first glance during the season of comfort, joy, and
goodwill towards men should have been sufficient enough. Slipping this kind of
needless detail in that whittles away at the character’s complexity while
eating up precious screen time that could have told the simple story of Belle
using the Christmas spirit to assist in Beast’s healing process just kept
nagging at the back of my mind as it dawned on me just how hollow this movie is
on any actual substance.
Little unique character play is established or put into
motion and no depth is added to whatever dynamics were already there in the
first place.
I harped on “Return of Jafar” quite a bit for being nothing
but a fluffed up glorified compilation of television episodes with embarrassing
production problems even for television standards but at least it had a
foundation to work with.
“The Enchanted Christmas” is basically the calculated opposite;
a pretty pile of nothingness, with almost no element to really hold your
attention. I say almost because what does grab your attention is so snicker-inducingly
bizarre that it would almost be worth watching the film for if everything else
surrounding it wasn’t so boring.
Despite existing before Gaston’s final showdown with the
Beast, the film does actually have an antagonist in the form of Forte, the castle’s
flamboyant, creepy, CGI pipe organ played by Tim Curry. He wants the Beast to stay
emo forever because when his emo bar is filled beyond containment, he has to
vent it out to the world through playing him in what I can only assume was the
1700s equivalent of brooding to a My Chemical Romance song because his parent’s
just don’t “get his complexity.”
In any case, why he needs Beast to play him when he’s
perfectly capable of making music himself and why he would want to be cursed as
the only object in the castle that is completely stationary for the rest of his
life, natural or otherwise, defies all logic.
It’s a subplot that only exists to remind us of how far CGI
technology has come in 20 years while setting the stage for a climax so narratively
uninvolving that you’ll enjoy it more if you just shut your eyes and drift to
sleep.
That’s not me being facetious, it’s me speaking from actual
experience.
The first time through, I watched this climax of a
Wolf/Bear/Ram/Man tearing apart a CGI instrument in an attic and drifted in and
out of consciousness with only the audio really sticking with me.
The Hellish Tim Burton-esque images of an animalistic Beast
waging a platform hopping duel against a physically abstract Tim Curry set in some
sort of negative zone conjured up by my subconscious’s desire to dream before
being jolted awake for the last minute or 2 of the film was way more
entertaining than the rest of the movie that I did watch, much less the actual
events that did transpire on screen.
I’m always on the lookout for new additions to my Holiday
cannon for the Christmas season. “The Enchanted Christmas” won’t be receiving
an invitation anytime soon.
Yet for all my complaints of “The Enchanted Christmas’” lack
of inspiration, I never thought that I would end up praising these sequels for
merely being actual movies. “Belle’s Magical World” doesn’t even have that
distinction.
This “film” is brought to us by Disney after the scrapping
of a planned spinoff television series, presumably for the defunct Disney
Afternoon block, which had been retired earlier the previous year, and is
probably best summarized by reviewer Tim Brayton, describing the film as “literally
trash; something that wasn’t good enough for its intended purpose and so Disney
slapped a box on it and charged money for it.” Well said indeed, my fine
fellow.
“Belle’s Magical World” is a series of three stories set
during Belle’s stay in the castle with no real thematic connection or even
framing. She lives here for now and these are simply three occasions in her
newfound life.
Some would debate 4 segments but after discovering said
fourth was a tacked on bonus feature to “The Enchanted Christmas” that somehow
made its way integrated into the DVD release of this one, I protested watching
it on principal alone.
It’s bad enough Disney forced me to pay to submit to their
animated torture, I’ll be damned if I was gonna put up with it for an
additional 15-20 minutes when the would-be episodes already slapped together
for this cash grab were already embarrassing enough.
In “The Perfect Word,” Beast makes an ass of himself while
Belle disapproves. They make up and nothing of importance occurred because
Beast can’t learn his lesson at a time set before the end of the first film. Meanwhile,
In “The Broken Wing,” Beast grows attached to a bird that Belle is tending to
and decides to keep it against its will as a pet, making an ass of himself. Belle
disapproves and they later make up while nothing of importance was gained because
Beast can’t learn his lesson at a time set before the end of the first film.
Are you beginning to see the fundamental problem here?
The audacity of many of these films to sincerely ask what
happens after happily ever after will never fail to astonish me but of all the
movies to spin off into a franchise across the entirety of the Disney Animated
Cannon, “Beauty and the Beast” was probably the absolute worst choice that
could have been made.
It’s probably one of the most airtight narratives that they’ve
ever produced and the core idea of it makes the notions of prequels and side
stories directly tied to the storytelling makeup of the movie shy of
impossible.
No more is this evident than in the remaining segment, “Fifi’s
Folly,” forgoing the usual Belle and Beast antics in favor of Lumiere’s desire
to celebrate the anniversary of his relationship with his sweetheart, asking
for Belle’s assistance in romancing her, resulting in the feather duster in
question to believe that the two are having an affair, resulting in a string of
bizarre innuendos that would be hilarious were it not for the realization that
the most amusing “Beauty and the Beast” ever became after its only good
installment was by essentially becoming an 18th century G-rated “Jerry
Springer.”
So little is going on in any of these segments you could
pretty much write out an entire script of what’s happening with 75% accuracy by
glancing at the visuals of a muted television occasionally every 2½ minutes.
Again, I speak from experience and once more, the results
were far more entertaining than what was actually happening upon rewatching
properly.
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