Another triumph

Rating: Null/10 (15 October 2011)

After the success of The Little Mermaid, and the accompanying renaissance of their animation section, Disney Studios made another trip to the stockpile of classic fairy stories, and plucked Beauty And The Beast from the shelves. Importantly, they matched it up with their secret weapons from Mermaid - Howard Ashman (so much more than a mere lyricist) and Alan Mencken. This is not to dismiss the contributions of its creative team, for this movie was the first ever animated film to be nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, a nomination which was well deserved.
Howard Ashman's fingerprints are all over this film. His awareness of story, his ability to provide exposition, to humanise, and to convey emotion through the medium of song lyrics are strengths brought as strongly to Beauty as to Mermaid: if anything, it is an even more accessible story, with wonderful words (the lyrics of Gaston are extraordinarily funny, yet still provide us with character and plot-relevant information).
This film is excellent, but forever tinged with the sadness that Ashman never lived to see it, dying at the appallingly early age of 40, 8 months before its release.
The 3D conversion is good, but there are occasional weird moments when neighbouring image elements don't have their comparative depths quite right: this is particularly the case with Beast's face sometimes.