Beauty and the Beast

After that brief stint with "Shrek 3," I'm back to working on my list of favorite movies. Having recently re-watched Beauty and the Beast for the first time in years, I decided that I'd do that one next. Deciding which Disney movies are the best is a tricky business, especially when you start including the Pixar movies, live action movies, and Japanese imports. None of that really matters because Beauty and the Beast is the best one of them all. I used to consider it equaled by The Incredibles, but as I said I watched Beauty and the Beast again recently and rethought that tie. Arguably Disney's most famous genre is the category of movies that deal with Princesses. Cinderella, Snow White, and Belle married into the title, while the likes of Aerial, Aurora and Jasmine were born into royalty, but that's not really important. The point is, most of Disney's most famous heroines are Princesses, and most of them are pretty much the same. They want to be free to see the world and all that, and they usually fall in love with a Prince over the course of a dance or whatever. As I've pointed out before, Belle is not the typical Disney heroine, just as the Beast is not the typical Disney Prince. As anyone who's anyone knows, the Beast was once a prince who was selfish and conceited and so an enchantress in disguise tested him and, finding him lacking, she put a spell on him so that unless he learned to love and be loved in return before the petals of a rose were all wilted, he would be stuck as a beast forever. Belle is the daughter of an inventor, not exactly glamorous, and she buries herself away in books because she doesn't fit in with her community. Belle's father is present, which is more than we can say for most Disney fathers, and it appears he raised her alone for there is no mention of her lack of a mother. Anyway, he's captured by the Beast and Belle takes his place as prisoner. The rest of it more or less writes itself. I think it's just grand that Belle and the Beast start off on such a bad foot, they eventually fall in love of course, but it's nice to see that there are reasons for them to fall in love, and they aren't all based on how good looking he or she is. The music is great, possibly the best Disney soundtrack ever, specifically "Be Our Guest" and "Beauty and the Beast" both of which are classics and both of which are staged flawlessly in the movie. There's really not a lot more I can say about the movie, except that it's got the most real emotional force of any Disney movie, and it doesn't shy away from having evil villains that get what's coming to them in the end. They really couldn't have made this movie any better, and even fifteen years after its release it is as enchanting as it's ever been. It's too bad that Walt Disney never saw this because, though I don't personally know him, I imagine that this is the sort of movie he dreamed about making. It's animated, but it's as good as, if not much better than, any live action version could ever be.

A+