Review of Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas (1997) by Alex V — 21 Feb 2014

Now, we all knew how completely magnificent and beautiful Beauty and the Beast was, although I found it quite unexpected that they decided to create this movie. I was watching the trailer and thought, this could be interesting, let's see what it comes up with.

Now I know most people have said it's terrible, the characters are not very developed especially the new ones and the humour is just very bland. I could have a tendency to believe all of this, but I feel that it's rather unique considering it's darkness, emotive power and general atmosphere.

Although it's darkness is what lets it slip. I knew the first film as magical, loving, sweet and beautiful. This is just downright scary and fearful for other films (which are definitely worse than this film).

The character cast are all back except for those who died, but they added in a whole bunch of other characters, of whom were highlights, or just annoying flies. The main highlight was Forte, who used to be the organ player before the Beast was such a gaspipe and had to suffer the wrath of being a beast, and now he's an actual organ whose bolted to a wall.

He had a fantastic voice over and was quite a good villain. As the film progresses, we see that he has a desire to eradicate Belle because he has a dying love for the Beast, and when his so called sidekick Fife (who is a cute character although kinda creepy) didn't want to hurt Belle, he would use the fact that Fife wouldn't be allowed to play a solo, although you realise towards the end that it was a lie.

Belle in this film is rather forgettable and the Beast is rather unusual with such a twisted personality. For me, this film isn't awful, but it's not amazing. I give credit for voices and some storyline elements, but it didn't live up to my highest expectations.