"Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light."
~ Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love

Saturday, March 10, 2018

Beauty and the Beast (1991, G)



I hadn’t seen this movie for years – years and years – and in addition to the recent live-action movie, my ears had gotten well used to the Broadway cast recording, which I’ve owned for quite a while.  As such, it was quite something to go back and watch the original film:  to see what I’d remembered and what I’d forgotten, and to recall why I loved it so much in the first place.

“Most peculiar mademoiselle” Belle trades places with her father as the prisoner of a gruff, sharp-tempered prince under a curse that turned him into a beast.  Unbeknownst to Belle, the curse can only be broken by true love, and the Beast’s servants (transformed by the curse into household objects) believe that Belle is their last hope for the spell finally being broken.  After their fraught beginning, Belle and the Beast gradually start understanding one another better, both realizing there may be more to the other than they had previously thought.

First things first:  as I said, I’ve had years of listening to the Broadway cast recording, and I was more recently exposed to the songs of the new movie (although there, more than anything, I’ve listened to new song “Evermore.”)  As such, I was more than a little blown away by the voices in this film.  Angela Lansbury’s Mrs. Potts singing the title song, of course, left an indelible mark on my childhood memory that never went away, but I’d forgotten how beautiful Paige O’Hara’s singing is as Belle.  She’s an absolute stunner in the role, and Jerry Orbach and Richard White, as Lumiere and Gaston respectively, both sound great as well.  If I’m a little iffier on Robby Benson’s brief singing as the Beast, it’s only because his singing voice sounds so unlike his character voice, to the point where I checked IMDb to see if someone else sang the part for him.  It’s given me more empathy for people who couldn’t stand the new movie – I still maintain that it has value, largely for how it expands on Belle and the Beast’s individual charactizations and the romance between them, but I’m sure it was easier for me to accept it for what it is because my memories, particularly of O’Hara’s singing, had gotten so fuzzy over time.

What can I say?  This is a classic, and when I was a kid, I loved the heck out of it.  I wasn’t quite four when it came out, so I can’t speak to my earliest memories of it, but I was always pro-Belle and only got more so throughout my childhood.  The book-reading heroine was always going to score big with me, and looking at her now, I also appreciate her determination, curiosity, and refusal to suffer fools (and chauvinists.)  Strangely, this time around, the Beast reminded me a lot of D’Argo from Farscape, what with the equal parts raging hothead and loveable dork.  I definitely prefer the richer characterization from the new film, but he works for what he is, and the animation does a bang-up job with him:  he makes the absolute best faces.  All the servants/enchanted objects are charming (with Lumiere staying on top as my favorite,) Gaston remains a terrific villain to hate – “Gaston” is such an awesome number – and the animation is both lovely and magical.  Utterly winning all around.

Warnings

Scary moments, some violence, and a little drinking.

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