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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