Beauty and the Beast Overview
Beauty and the Beast is widely considered the best animated Disney feature
of the studio's 1980s/1990s renewal of the form. Based on the classic French fairy tale, it tells the story of Belle
(voiced by Paige O'Hara), an intelligent young woman scorned by her townspeople for being a bookworm, weary of fighting
off the advances of the arrogant Gaston (Richard White), and dreaming of escape. When her father gets lost in the woods
and captured by the forbidding Beast (Robby Benson), a once-handsome prince turned into a monster by a witch, Belle goes
off to rescue him. Taken with her, the Beast agrees to release Belle's father if she agrees to stay with him forever.
Initially repulsed, Belle soon finds
much to appreciate in the Beast's hidden, tender nature.The Beast's servants -- a clock(David Ogden Stiers),
a teapot (Angela Lansbury), and a candlestick (Jerry Orbach) -- see Belle as their salvation: if the
Beast and a woman fall in love before his 21st birthday, he will be free from the curse.
The songs are first-class, the tale is told with sincerity but not
sentimentality, and the characters of Belle and the Beast, complex individuals who defy stereotyping
and change over the course of the story, are more three-dimensional than in most live-action movies.
The eye-popping animation is beautifully rendered, and Beauty and the Beast certainly deserves its
place amongst Disney's animated classics. In 2002, a special 89-minute edition of the film was
released in IMAX theaters with the addition of a newly animated song, "Human Again."
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