Live your own fairy tale

Rating: 10/10 (19 January 2003)

Belle is a young woman who has arrived at that age where budding dreams and fantasies begin to well up inside her young heart and yearn for a form of release. The world of the small French town where she lives revolves around the dreary hustle and bustle of everyday life, with the fate of woman's domestic life waiting to entrap her. She alienates herself from her fellow townspeople with her quirky and aloof nature, and instead transmutes her desire for escape into a love for books. We see her passionately singing to a passing herd of sheep of her adoration for tales of romance and adventure, yet later when she sits alone in her house feelings of loneliness and depression begin to surface.
Despite the importance literature holds in her heart, the film develops the theme of going out and living your own adventure. This message really strikes home in the closing scene of the movie, when an image of Belle and the Prince transfigures into artwork in a stained glass window, a grand gesture of how this small-town girl with big dreams has changed into a symbol of fantasy and magic that captured in the art of the stained glass attains a sense of immortality and truth. I think it is important in this sense to realize that both Beauty and the Beast undergo their own separate form of transformation.
The Beast is somewhat underdeveloped, for we never really learn much about him other than that behind the rough, animal facade is something warm and benevolent that Belle brings to life. We learn more about him through his actions, rather than through dialogue or song, yet there are certain moments in the film, such as when Beast decides to let Belle go, when the magic of the animators really shines. Beast has the largest, most expressive face of all the characters in the film, and the animation team really brings it to life. After he transforms, though, he becomes just another pretty blonde face, which has a subtle resemblance to Aladdin (a later Disney character).
Enjoy the film, then go out and live your own fairy tale.
10 out of 10.