Note: I am reviewing this movie because it has been rereleased to theaters. There wasn't enough advertising about this in my opinion, so if you didn't know about it, go see it on the big screen since you know now.
Michael's Grade: A+
Review: One of the Disney Studio's best animated features made after Walt passed away.
The characters in this movie are fantastic from the most major characters to the most minor. Belle is an extremely likable and very relatable protagonist. We can both perfectly see why the town thinks she is odd, and why the Beast falls in love with her. The Beast is a complex character, and one with great depth. This is a character which has to change from threating and intimidating to very charming and lovable. This is done perfectly. You perfectly believe his anger and ruthlessness towards the beginning of the film, but also believe that he has a nice and gentle side to him as well. The servants could have easily been just one note characters but they are also given time to fully develop and feel very real and well thought out, while never distracting from the main story.
The animation and design for this film couldn't be better. This look is very stylized but not so much that it ever feels abstract. There is depth and reality in this animation but it still never loses sense of being a cartoon or tries to be like a live action film. This is perfect because this movie ranges from cartoon slapstick to serious drama to pure fantasy. If it was too cartoony, the fantasy would not pay off, because it wouldn't feel like it was something special or out of the ordinary in this world. However if it was too realistic, that would make the slapstick humor fall flat and make the fantasy seem to fake. This film though hits the perfect medium. The character animation is also brilliant (this was the first time supervising animators were credited with which character they supervised in an animated Disney film by the way). Glen Keane's animation of the Beast is definitely a high point of this movie as he captures both the larger than life aspects of this character as well as the subtly of him just through the way the character moves.
The story itself is quite simple, but the beauty is in its simplicity. This is one of those films that perfectly captures the idea of a simple story being told well, it can hold its own with all the huge epic stories out there. There is such a charm to this film's simplicity and the whole movie just comes across beautifully. This kind of simplicity never dates and like how Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs never feels confided to the 1930's this film will never feel confined to the 1990's. This is truly a timeless movie in the way too few are. This is one of the movies that I just know will always stand the test of time. This will still be hailed as a classic many years from now and it rightfully deserves that place.
-Michael J. Ruhland
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