D52 Week 30: Beauty and the Beast!

Do you ever feel pressured to like a movie, just because someone terribly important to you already absolutely adores it? If you're one of the rare people who happens to know my beloved Taylor but somehow isn't already aware, Beauty and the Beast is pretty much her favourite Disney film, ever. (To be fair, though, I'm assuming she HASN'T seen Home on the Range yet.) And, well, yes, of course I've already seen it, but I was only in elementary school at the time. (Or grade school, or primary school, or whatever you prefer.) So, it's not like I remembered it vividly or anything. I found myself actually worrying about it a little bit! "Oh god, what if I end up not liking this? Will she disown me? Will I not get any tonight?" There's a lot of pressure when it comes to having to form an honest opinion about something someone close to you holds so near and dear to their hearts. So, you can imagine my relief when, yes, Beauty and the Beast actually was genuinely good! Relative to the previous Renaissance fairy tale, The Little Mermaid, it's definitely a lot more focused, with a less head-scratching story, and a sense of emotion that its predecessor couldn't be bothered to muster.

Which is to say, yes, I did get some after all.

Have you noticed just how rare it is for human protagonists and protagonistas in Disney films up to this point to actually be, y'know, likeable? They're generally pretty insufferable, really! They're either numb and personality-free, in the way Alice or Cinderella were, or just completely bitchy, like Aurora or, um, Kid From The Black Cauldron. Often, they have mind-numbingly shallow ideas of what constitutes romance. By comparison, Belle is a revelation! She actually has a personality, and a relatively sexy one at that! The only things she really bitches about are exactly the things one SHOULD complain about, like having one's father imprisoned, for instance! She has hobbies outside of hollowly lusting after handsome princes! Even that alone would pretty much make this the most tolerable Disney fairytale yet, but then they went and made a movie that has other positive points going for it, too!

Like, well, the Beast's castle staff, for instance! Beauty and the Beast is such an impressive production that even its bit characters are leaps and bounds ahead of, well, the majority of characters in Disney films past. David Ogden Stiers as Cogsworth? Can't argue with that! (After all, the secret of his comedy is..........timing.) Jerry Orbach as Lumiere? Hell yes! If anyone could elevate that character above standard stereotypical lusty Frenchman territory, it's him. Angela Lansbury as Mrs. Potts? I defy you to think of anyone, ANYONE AT ALL, who could possibly be more suited to the task of voicing a matronly tea receptacle! Jo Anne Worley as, um, the wardrobe? Eh, sure, why not, it doesn't matter anyway because she only gets, like, two lines. (Incidentally, though, while watching Belle's Magical World for Taylor to grab screencaps, I remember noting that Worley actually put more effort into acting than, well, anyone else in that entire "film".) Amazingly, even though they're essentially all comic relief characters, they don't stick out like sore thumbs in the way that Disney comic relief characters generally do. Instead - and this is a remarkable achievement, really - they all feel like an organic atmospheric component of Prince Adam's castle.

And they get some amazing songs to sing, too! Alan Menken and Howard Ashman's score is simply stunning, and very well could be my favourite collection of Disney songs, ever. Somehow, they're ALL good! Even "Human Again", which was correctly removed from the original, properly proper version of the film, would be a thoroughly above average addiction to a typical Disney soundtrack. It just so happens that in this particular film, it was up against things like the ridiculously catchy "Be Our Guest". That's tough to match! And then we have not one but two great character theme songs, for Belle and Gaston. Not to mention the theme song for the movie itself, which I will be pathetic and admit made me choke up a bit. There's just something about emotional songs where you can hear the singer's voice break ever so slightly that really gets to me I guess - Taylor mentions that, at one point, Belle was supposed to sing "Beauty and the Beast" as well, but in this one case, I've gotta say, letting Angela Lansbury have her way with it was definitely a better idea. (Though, both of those ideas were infinitely preferable to letting Céline Dion sing it. I didn't like it back in the 1950s when Disney had the Mellomen contribute renditions of Disney songs thoroughly stripped of their personality, and I certainly don't enjoy her doing the same, alongside the ridiculously named Peabo Bryson.

The Beast (aka Prince Adam, though that's not even confirmed in the film itself, to be fair) is very probably the most compelling romantic lead Disney has ever managed to produce, too. I mean, yeah, everyone probably knows the original story, so they probably didn't need to go through the effort of painting him so convincingly as a genuinely ambiguous figure - and yet, they did anyway. When the film opens, he's painted in a fairly villainous light, and you can't even attribute that to filmmaking trickery. Because, well, he IS being villainous! Belle enters his life at a moment where he teeters on the precipice of losing his humanity altogether, of outright becoming a complete monster - which surely would've consumed him even before the Elaborate Glass-Encased Flower-Based Curse Timekeeping Device made it official! Does the fact that he was teetering on that point inherently make him a bad guy? Anyone who'd argue that point is clearly sort of naïve! He was still a young guy, too, thrust into what was a rather blatantly unfair situation, and everybody's life has had the possibility of going in either direction, even yours! We often simply don't realise it because we're so comfortable with these sorts of choices that we've made, that we don't realise they were choices in the first place. (If you're reading this, chances are you're a good person. Unless you're Jim, in which case, you're not.) What makes the case of Prince Adam different from every other Disney film where a character is saved from their life by simply falling in love? That's a simple question. This film, magical finale perhaps exempted, doesn't treat the simple act of falling in love as the magical solution to his problem, but more justifiably, as just the driving motivating factor that drives him to regain a bit of control over his own problems.

The only thing about this film that really DOESN'T quite work is the ostensible moral about inner beauty. What sets off this chain of events? Prince Adam runs afoul of an attractive enchantress disguised as a hideous old beggar. How does the beggar secretly being young and attractive make this any more horrible of him? It doesn't! If anything, it seems to undermine the lesson at work, because this person is a terrible liar, and if anything, not giving handouts to compulsive liars is probably a good practice. And aren't there hideous old enchantresses, too? Perhaps if Prince Adam had genuinely offended someone on a personal level, I'd be more understanding of the spell cast on not only him, but everyone under his employ. But, he didn't, and given the circumstances, this enchantress practically comes across as the secondary antagonist of the film, after Gaston! And then, at the other end of the spectrum, we have the Beastified Adam ostensibly learning his lesson about inner beauty....by falling in love with Belle, who is physically the exact opposite of a hideous old beggar. Do we really believe that he would've been so (relatively) tender and caring towards her if she hadn't been smokin' hot, especially for 18th century France? No, he probably wouldn't have - which means that even the terms and conditions of the aforementioned enchantress's curse have, at their core, not terribly much to do with the lesson she originally wanted to teach him in the first place! As a moral tale, this film is actually a complete disaster when you analyse it, so it's a damned good thing that it works so compellingly as a romance!

I'm sure there are plenty of people who disagree with that, of course. Like I said a couple weeks ago for The Little Mermaid, everyone has a different idea of what constitutes actual romance. Regardless of how you might feel about that, can we at least agree that this has more heart than any film Disney had released in, well...at least a decade or two? It's sweet, it's not crude, and it actually cares about its characters. Well, except for Gaston. But NOBODY cares about Gaston, except for Gaston, and poor unrequited Lefou. Even if they did royally screw over Maurice's weathervane (seriously, get a look at that thing the next time you watch the movie), I can't really hesitate in calling this the best movie of the D52 project thus far, and one that probably won't be topped, either. And I'm not just saying that because of Taylor. :)

TERRIBLE AND USELESS AND UNNECESSARY AND UNWORTHY AND THOROUGHLY UNJUSTIFIED DIRECT-TO-DVD DISNEY SEQUEL OF THE WEEK: Booty and the Beats is a pseudo-sequel set in the present, starring Tyler James Williams as MC Emcee, a world-famous rap star coming off of a breakup with his previous girlfriend, an event which caused him to write an entire album of songs about how women are stupid and worthless and mere objects, an album which is beloved by fans and critics alike, for some reason. He is presently touring the world in support of said album, which has brought him to beautiful France, where he is set to perform two huge concerts on consecutive nights in front of the historic Beauty-and-the-Beast Castle, for some reason. During his first performance, he spots a beautiful girl in the audience, Michaela Cavanaugh (Bridgit Mendler), whom he is utterly enamoured with! He tries to ask her out after the show, but she turns him down, on the basis of the terrible chauvinist message behind all his new songs. Consumed with despair, he flees into the castle to have some time alone to weep openly, where he is comforted by the ghosts of Prince Adam's servants, re-enchanted for some reason, including a subpar new Lumiere. Most notably, Mrs. Potts gives him newfound courage by telling him a story, based on an unused script from an aborted Beauty and the Beast animated series, about this one time the Beast ended up having to babysit Chip, and EVERYTHING went hilariously wrong until he finally sucked it up and asked Belle for advice! Though this has nothing to do with his situation, MC Emcee is nonetheless re-energized. At his second concert, he throws out his setlist in order to perform a new song he wrote, about his deep, unfaltering love for Michaela, whom he had only met once before, but of course it's not seen as creepy. She loved it, and the two get married, despite the objections of MC Emcee's ruthless and villainous record producer (Peabo Bryson!), who gets thrown off the side of the castle. In the distance, the spirits of Belle and Prince Adam hold each other and smile in approval at the new, young couple's heartwarming love.