Disney's best since its Uncle Walt was alive, but the attempts at feminism fall flat.

Rating: 8/10 (1 June 2001)

Beauty and the Beast is a very entertaining, very imaginative reworking of the tired old fairy tale. The animation is great (though it would have been nice if some the musical numbers--namely Be Our Guest--had stayed in the same physical plane as Belle instead of having the backgrounds vanish and allowing the characters to have free, nearly surreal movements), the acting is (usually) great, and the songs are fun.
The problems I have with this movie are minor and more political/sociological than anything else. Belle is treated by the writers as more or less a model of modern feminism (normally I would complain about this sort of time-swapping social values without exception, but I've come to expect this kind of PC treatment from Disney, so what can I do?)--she reads, she doesn't listen to other peoples complaints about her reading, and she refuses to marry Gascon. That's about it, really. The latter two are truly good personality traits. The other is more iffy because of what she reads: fairy tales (ones with pictures, though Gascon must be blind not to see them). As it turns out, she's just dreaming about a prince charming coming to rescue her from her crass rural existence, not a thinker capable of doing that on her own. She is not much more than the reader of the silly romance novels that true writers like Alexander Pope, Aphra Behn, Samuel Johnson, and Jonathan Swift have been making fun of since the Restoration.
This is none-the-less a minor complaint. I mean, at least she isn't cos-playing Sailor Moon or the Power Rangers.
Now, here's a thought: why didn't the writers bother comparing the Beast with Gascon? Isn't it true that the Beast was just like Gascon before the spell was cast on him? As such, wouldn't that mean Gascon (though an idiot) could have been redeemed instead of cheaply plunged to his death (what is it with Disney lately, anyway--can't they think of other ways of killing people, or better yet finding a more interesting way to end a movie than killing the villain). There's just something sick about that sort of thing since he is only a human, and goes completely against the redemptive power of the main story.