Not only that, the work of composer Alan Menken and lyricist Howard Ashman (both Little Mermaid veterans) expanded and deepened the use of music and song to move the narrative forward, essentially turning the film into the best Broadway show not on Broadway (not surprisingly, it eventually was turned into a Broadway show in 1997). Technically speaking, it carried on with Disney’s long tradition of exceptional hand-drawn animation, but also further developed the influx of computer animation to give the film a visual sweep that would have been all but impossible a decade earlier. Not surprisingly, Beauty and the Beast was the first animated film to be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar, and it remains a critical and popular favorite.

Like many a Disney movie before it, Beauty and the Beast is based on a well-known fable, myth, or fairy tale, in this case one derived from an 18th-century short story by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont that has been reshaped and repurposed for a modern audience. Screenwriter Linda Woolverton (who also wrote The Lion King), working in collaboration with numerous artists and story supervisors, concocted a new background story involving a spoiled prince who rejects the pleas for help from an old beggar woman only to learn that she is actually an enchantress who puts a curse on him, turning him into a hideous beast, a state from which he will not escape unless he loves and is loved in return by his 21st birthday. The Beast (Robby Benson) lives in isolation in a large, looming castle, surrounded by the castle’s staff, who have also been cursed and turned into various domestic objects like a candelabra (Jerry Orbach), a clock (David Ogden Stiers), a teapot (Angela Landsbury), and a wardrobe (Jo Anne Worley).

Enter Belle (Paige O’Hara), a beautiful and intelligent young woman who resides in a nearby provincial village. She attracts the unwanted attention of Gaston (Richard White), the town’s self-absorbed number-one bachelor, but she would much rather be reading a book or helping her hapless father invent crazy contraptions. When her father accidentally stumbles into the Beast’s castle, Belle offers herself up as his prisoner instead, thus creating the potential for a relationship if the Beast can learn to control his vicious temper and Belle can see past his wolfish outer appearance to the possibility of humanity (and redemption) within.

As a historical artifact, Beauty and the Beast carries a great deal of importance in terms of how it refashioned the scope of traditional animation and fully reinstated Disney at the top of the animation world. Yet, it has never been one of my favorite Disney animated films, despite its many charms and pleasures. Ashman and Menken’s work is generally outstanding, especially in the big showstoppers like “Belle” and “Be Our Guest,” both of which derive their insatiable energy and excitement from the gradual accumulation of participation, so that, at one point, for example, the entire village is singing and dancing as Belle walks by with her nose buried in a book. The film also has some wonderfully subversive humor, particularly the song that Gaston’s bumbling, fawning groupie Lefou (Jesse Corti) sings in honor of his muscle-bound, meat-headed pal’s über-masculinity; it’s a hilarious undercutting of institutionalized narcissism and everything Western culture prizes in men, particularly the ego-driven win-at-all-costs ethos.

Yet, the film’s core—the characters of Belle and the Beast—is its weakest component. There is virtually no connection between the prince’s shallow selfishness and the Beast’s barely repressed rage, thus there is little sense that they are the same character. Belle is also problematic, even though she represents a major step forward in terms of Disney’s depiction of female protagonists. As many have pointed out, she and The Little Mermaid’s Aerial marked a shift toward increasingly proactive, rather than reactive heroines. Belle is smart, she’s determined, she’s honorable (and, of course, conventionally beautiful)—and that is essentially the problem. Belle is so decidedly positive in every regard, so simplistically shaped to meet the desires of all audience members (both dreamy little girls and feminist objectors), that she ultimately fails as a character and becomes just as much of an object as Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty. Her virtue is simply too virtuous to make her very interesting or memorable.

Copyright ©2016 James Kendrick

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