Beauty & the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas

I know I reviewed this last year when I did the Disney sequels, but looking back at the review & seeing the movie, I realized I had more to say & some of my thoughts had changed. Anyway, released in 1997, Beauty & the Beast would be the next Disney classic to be butchered with a sequel after Aladdin (even if King of Thieves was actually good) & this would be the first infamous midquel Disney would make (a movie taking place during the events of the first film, not before or after besides the beginning & the end in this case) & would be a pretty bad formula with a lot of disregards to the continuity of the first film, which is definitely the case here! Anyway, with all the original cast returning along with new ones like Tim Curry, Bernadette Peters & Paul Reubens, can a bit of DisneyToon's magic make Christmas more enchanting, or is it as beastly as a getting food poisoning after Christmas dinner? Well, considering my last review of this, I seriously doubt the former!

Story: Yes, my biggest criticism was the plot since it butchered my all time favourite Disney movie, and it still stands but I'll explain more! Not only is there hardly any continuity between this & the first film due to the timeline (this takes place after Beast saved Belle from the wolves & they started to warm up to each other), but the whole thing feels unecessary as it does nothing to further the story from the first film or say anything new about the characters besides giving them a 180 & making them almost unrecognisable in terms of personality. As for the comedy, most of it is just bad puns (i.e. 'Don't whine glasses'), annoying slapstick (i.e. the 'clockboarding' scene) & Fife doing crazy shenanigans to avoid Belle & Beast from getting together. OK, some bits made me chuckle a tiny bit, but the comedy still doesn't work as a whole. Another issue I have is the awful & stupid dialogue along with scenes & musical numbers which have little to no purpose to the plot in either this or the first film. Oh yeah, and Forte's plans or even addition to Beauty & the Beast make no sense for very obvious reasons if you have seen the first film as, well, we knew the characters wouldn't die & the spell would be broken by the end of the first film!  But the worst part would be that there's hardly any heart! The fact that the side characters are now forcing Belle & the Beast to get together while Forte is trying to avoid the spell from being broken just takes away from the fact that they fell in love on their own terms & what made the first movie really work as a romance as it now feels forced & unatural! Oh yeah, and the fact it's a Christmas film doesn't do it justice even if it tries to give you that warm Christmas feeling & kind of succeeds because of the animation! OK, I know I'm really smacking this film considering Belle's Magical World is a bajillion times worse when they put no effort in at all, but what I'm trying to say is failing to live up to the heart of the first film, the continuity being all over the place & you're pretty much left with a turkey of a Christmas film!

Animation: Yeah, looking back at my review, I was definitely too harsh on the animation & I hardly looked into it, because watching the movie again, the animation isn't all that bad! It's definitely a step up from the Aladdin sequels, but it doesn't come close to the quality of the original either (I know, it's dependant on budget, but still) Even if the character designs are more polished, at times they can look off model & the facial animation can go crazy for no reason, making them look & feel a little but too cartoony. Also, for some strange reason, it changes from really good to really rough in terms of quality thanks to the thickness of the outlines & the colouring done being pretty basic along with the inconsistency of the lighting & shadowing, with them looking flat for quite a lot. The character animation isn't all that bad despite it not being as fluid as the first film, but at times the facial animation can go all over the place & look over the top & cartoony (especially in the scene where the Beast wants to get a gift for Belle). One thing I do like is the animation in the Stories sequence, with a very stylized look from an old fashion book & is actually the best part of the animation in the film along with the backgrounds! They actually do look nice in the castle & it can look very colourful with the Christmas mood it goes for along with the black forest. However, then comes the big elephant in the room: the CGI on Forte. It is so blatantly obvious & phoned in that it was as if they didn't want to hide the fact he was CGI & his design looked creepy in a bad way (not in the way we were meant to see it) I definitely have seen much worse works in the direct to video department & it is a rather nice attempt given their last sequels' animation, so I'm not gonna say it's that bad!

 

Characters: One thing's for sure, these are not the same characters I absolutely love! Belle this time round for some reason believes she can change the Beast by giving him a present despite the only nice thing he had done for her prior was save her from a pack of wolves! Yeah, she definitely isn't the same eccentric, smart & woman from the first film & has now been reduced to a two dimensional despite trying to rebel against the Beast's thoughts on Christmas! And Beast has turned into an angsty yet goofy idiot who hates Christmas because the script says so! As for the rest of the characters, they're all pretty much watered down from the first film. Lumiere is now trying to pursue Angelique (wait, I thought he was in love with Fifi the featherduster) & is all ecstatic about love except is now more forceful with Belle & the Beast, Cogsworth is just the stuck up butt monkey that wants order in the castle & doesn't want Christmas in the castle until mentions of Christmas dinner, Mrs Potts & Chip (played by Haley Joel Osment in this) are pretty much useless, Maurice never appears or is mentioned at all & then there's the new characters...where do I begin? May as well start with Angelique, voiced by Broadway legend Bernadette Peters, the bossy & cynical castle decorator appropriately turned into an angel ornament. Honestly, although Bernadette Peters is really good with her voice acting (much better than the recent Legends of Oz film), the fact that we know Angelique is going to change her mind over Christmas doesn't really make her that well developed despite the fact it's clear that's what they were trying to do with her. And then there's Forte, the villain of the film that doesn't want the spell to be broken because he thinks he's more useful as a pipe organ & the Beast needs him more than ever...honestly, he's a terrible villain despite his interesting if not creepy design & Tim Curry's really really really hammy & entertaining voice acting! He comes nowhere near close to Gaston & is pretty much useless considering we already knew the spell would be broken despite the fact he actually tries to kill Belle & the Beast in the climax to avoid them falling in love...anyway, his henchman Fife is an annoying & superfluous comedy sidekick despite Paul Reuben's acting, there's a random Jewish axe voiced by Jeff Bennett who's pretty much useless & all the other household objects are either annoying or useless. To sum up, with butchering the characterisation & turning them into a group of generics along with inferior new ones, this pretty much leaves me wondering if the writers actually saw the original film they're trying to do a follow-up to!

 

Songs: Remember the classic Howard Ashman & Alan Menken songs that you still get stuck in your head today? Hope you've said goodbye to them because it's a completely different story here! The first original song is Stories, which isn't bad by all means in terms of melody or Paige O'Hara's beautiful singing, but the lyrics really bother me as they're about Belle wanting to get through to the Beast & change him even though like I mentioned, she got round to him when he started being nice. As Long As There's Christmas is just stupid & easily the worst song with nonsensical & generic lyrics, hardly any melody, & is pretty much all about the commercialisation of Christmas instead of what it's really about & it just made me cringe so much! OK, the reprise is actually really good because of the quieter & softer tone & Bernadette Peters' & Paige O'Hara's singing together is very very good! That & Don't Fall In Love is one of the most forgettable villains songs ever despite Tim Curry's very hammy singing & the bizarre imagery with the weird lazer cupids. There's hardly any melody, it doesn't show Forte's motivation besides his weird obsession with the Beast & it's so obvious he's the villain, they're not even trying! Oh yeah, and somehow they got away with the line 'If you're turned on then just turn off', what a great way to have something for the parents in a family film. A Cut Above The Rest is the most useless song ever as it does nothing to progress the plot or character development & is just there for the obligatory comedy sidekick song! Despite a few nice melodies here & there in the score, most of the songs are useless, the lyrics are ridiculous & they are nowhere near as memorable as it's predecessor!

 

Beauty and The Beast: The Enchanted Christmas is an example of the quintessential midquel: it has no regards to continuity, the characters are backwards, the story is cliched, unecessary & uninteresting & there's hardly any heart put in. This was more painful to me considering Beauty & the Beast is my all time favourite Disney film, but if you don't care for it, you may like it & the animation is admittedly not all that bad despite it's obvious glitches. But it's clear this is when they were starting to not care about Disney sequels/midquels & why they shouldn't have been made in the first place!
Story: 3/10
Animation: 6/10
Characters: 2/10
Songs: 2/10
Overall: 3/10