Beauty And The Beast (***1/2)
review by Jon Waterman

A tale as old as time.  Prince gets a spell put on him and gets turned into a hideous creature and can’t turn human again unless he finds consensual love.  A young girl finds him at his castle and is forced to stay in return for her father’s release.  All the “inanimate” objects talk.  Of course, there’s singing and dancing.  Oh, and for added conflict, the guy who wants to marry the young girl wants to destroy the prince.  Happens every day.
 
Remember when Disney made quality films?  Yeah, those were the days.  “Beauty and the Beast.”  Now that’s a quality film.  Today, we have sequel after unwanted sequel popping out of the cookie-cutter company.  What happened to effort?  What happened to dignity?
 
With this motion picture, Disney takes one of its many pioneering moves:  computer animation.  It’s use is limited, yet extremely effective.  Surprisingly, the look that we marveled at over a decade ago isn’t so different from some of the stuff we still see today.  However, what makes those sequences fantastical and romantic (in both senses of the word), isn’t just this new technology in front of us.  It’s the whole package.  It’s the Beast finally sharing an intimate moment with Belle, the woman he admires more than anyone, more than himself.  It’s the wonderful song in the background and the soothing and touching way it’s sung (by Angela Lansbury as Mrs. Potts).  It’s the dynamic movement of the camera that flows as effortlessly as Belle’s gown.  All of these pieces together add up to equal the magic of the moment and the film itself.
 
Fortunately, nearly the whole film is given as much care as this turning point.  The multi-layered locations that the characters walk through give the film dimensionality and thus a more complete cinematic appeal.  Directors Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise and the rest of the Disney crew put much thought and effort into each shot to create an incredible piece of artwork.  Remarkably, one of the most effective sequences in the motion picture, contains no motion.  The opening sequence which tells the story of the Prince’s curse through stained glass window-like drawings and the narrator’s enigmatic, deep voice immediately drew my attention with it’s boldness and it’s success.
 
The artwork is stunning and harks back towards the quality of some of the first Disney features.  The storyline is a classic fairy tale with typical Disney alterations, yet it’s still effective.  The acting is cartoony, but we are watching a cartoon and if the exaggerations in the vocal work matches the exaggerations seen on screen, I have no complaints.  The songs are only half catchy.  Some of them are drawn out far past their prime, and a couple are outright throwaways.  So much so, that I can’t remember the names or even the chorus.  I don’t want to end on a bad note.  “Beauty and the Beast” rightfully belongs amidst the list of animated classics.  It’s a film that families will and should enjoy together for generations to come.

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