A charming, enchanting and beautiful animated film!

Rating: Null/10 (6 January 2004)

"Beauty and the Beast" (1991), marked a return to top form for Disney. In this film, excellent animation, characters, story and songs all come together. After Walt Disney died in 1967, the animated films after that had lost that special Disney touch. With this film, Disney re-discovered it's magic touch.
"Beauty and the Beast" is a re-telling of the classic fairy tale. Here, the heroine "Belle" is an independent, book loving woman with a strong sense of imagination. The second change made to the traditional story are the castle servants under the spell as furniture and kitchenware.
I was very impressed with the film. I felt it definitely deserved it's Academy Award nomination for Best Picture of 1991 (a first ever). It's competition that year were: "Thelma and Louise" and "The Silence of the Lambs" (both very good films, in my opinion). Now there is a new category: Best Animated Feature Film. If it existed then, this is the award that Beauty and the Beast deserved to win.
I've seen the other Disney classic films: from "Snow White" (1937) to "Dumbo" (1942) and believe that this film ranks with them as one of Disney's Best.