Thursday 11 January 2018

Beauty and the Beast

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This has always been one of my favourite movies, but I’m not being biased when I say that this is one of the greatest Animated movies of all time.

First of all, the love story at its core is obviously a beautiful one and the ways in which it has been adapted, with the development of the villain for example, are actually an improvement on the original fairy-tale.  The parallel between Gaston and the Beast, where as the latter becomes more human the former becomes the true Beast is far more compelling than Beauty’s sisters in the (now probably lesser known) original story and although she may be a bit too perfect at times, Belle is a far more interesting than her fairy-tale counterpart.

Speaking of the villain, Gaston is a great one, managing to be both cartoonish enough to be likable, whilst being monstrous enough be genuinely threatening, a feat not achieved by many animated villains, in addition to the aforementioned parallels with the Beast. The Enchanted Objects are also perfect comic relief, specifically Lumiรจre and Cogsworth, both of whom have great character design.

The backgrounds and specifically the castle itself are stunning – the gothic aspects of the design looks both incredibly cool and slightly intimidating, whilst in other places it is as warm and light as it needs to be. Much like the Rescuers Down Under, the rest of the animation also looks much more fluid than previous films in the canon, thanks to developments in animation around the time, so that’s really great.

Something I haven’t even mentioned yet is the music- Alan Menken and Howard Ashman once again provided some of the best music in the Disney animated canon, from the fantastic storytelling of Belle, to the spectacle of Be Our Guest to the sheer beauty of the title song.  

Ratings

Good guys: Some of the most loveable characters in the canon get 8/10

Bad guys: Gaston is one of the best villains in the canon, so the bad guys get 10/10

Animation: Some stunning backgrounds and nice character designs mean that the movie gets 9/10 for animation

Music: A fantastic soundtrack gets 10/10

Plot: One of the greatest love stories ever told, the plot gets 10/10

Overall rating: 47/50


Next review: Aladdin

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