The film has not dated well...

Rating: Null/10 (23 November 2004)

I saw the film on the big screen last night at the Harvard Film Archive and I have to say that it has not aged well. There are odd plot devices with mess with continuity and poor animation at times. Regarding the first point, Belle's horse pops in and out as she conveniently needs it. She gains super-human strength having hoisted the Beast onto her horse and pulling his massive weight back onto the balcony at the climax. I realize the problems of configuring a fairy tale to fit into a 70 minute all-ages format but it messes with the mystery of the fairy tale.
'Snow White' was as linear a narrative, but there was intense attention to detail and empathy. You never really know what it motivating characters in 'Beast'. She goes from hating him to loving him from one scene to the next. Her own character comes off as conceited as Gaston at times. (Me?! The wife of that boorish...) Additionally, the attention to detail and consistency in character design now seems like light-years from this film. Each character looks as though drawn by a different hand which shows the lack of control in art direction that exists now. Some of these are down right sloppy in long-shots. 'Beauty' was a transitional film as the studio was adapting to more digital techniques (digital ink and paint, computer animation) and the glitches in hand-drawn techniques help to date the film. At times the Beast is massive in scale and at others (after her befriends Belle) he is only slightly larger than her. It becomes cumbersome to look at him after a while. Once he does 'come into the light', his mystery is broken and the final design feels unsatisfactory. The supporting characters (townspeople, etc.)are not drawn well at all and one needs only to look at a film like 'Pinocchio' to see what solid animation art direction is. I understand why 'Beauty' makes everyone's top movie lists but it deserves criticism as much as any other film especially since the bar has been raised for animation storytelling since 1991.