Beauty and the Beast (1991)

Angela Lansbury said she was too old and her voice was not what it used to be to sing the titular love ballad. Howard Ashman and Alan Menken charmed her into singing one recording, "for practice," and they would disregard it. Lansbury agreed.

This was the recording they used in the movie.

a story about the perils of fan girls and their poor choice in men.

DL is pretty much Cogsworth

Human Again is a beautiful song

Not a fan of "cartoon" movies but this is one of my favorites.

R5 Agreed. I only like this and The Hunchback of Notre Dame

The first animated movie to ever be nominated for Best Picture. Classic!

R7 the ONLY animated movie to be nominated for Best Picture.

Great picture

The New York Philharmonic did the orchestrations on this

I love this film it’s a classic and the music holds up even today.

R6 imo Hunchback hits harder, it’s somehow more epic and dark and chilling and human, probably because the source text is not a children’s fairytale. Mary! me but the opening number’s Latin lyrics and also the ending chant of ‘bells, bells, bells’ gives me physical body shivers of dread every time I hear it (my horror of Catholicism).

Hunchback almost feels like an adult animated film to me—or would, without the stupid Gargoyle commedia and the occasional stupid gag like Phoebus’ horse sitting on some guy. It’s beyond the scope of what D!sney were and are usually able to encompass. I also think this of their tales on Mulan and Pocahontas. All three feel like serious films with #THEMES, that deal with moral shades. I don’t believe Beauty & the Beast manages this quite as well or goes into it as deeply, though it does have emotional resonance and power as well as artistic poignancy.

Both Beauty & Hunchback speak to the experiences of alientation understood by gay people in particular, I think.

Loved it in 1991, still love it today, an eternal Disney classic, stunning and breathtaking and sweeping and awesome and spectacular from beginning to end!! And upthread, I'd argue that B&tB is Not a mere cartoon movie, it is an ageless classic Art Film. :-)

^^I post that stupid essay yet am a diehard Universal/Dreamworks Baby lesbian and Anastasia stan. Dimitri was a cross-dressed butch and no one will ever change my mind!

Anyway, as you were BATB fans.

That movie made me gay at 8yo, and I had the big time hots for Gaston!! lol Ahh, childhood memories.

R15 Gaston was such a prick. He should have met a stickier end.

Richard White, the voice of Gaston, was an opera singer. I think he quit singing/acting, but his voice is amazing.

Love watching all the interviews and BTS with the animators who worked on it. What a blast it must have been to be a young animator in LA, early 90s (favorite era) and helping usher in the Disney Renaissance!

R17 OT but that should be its own thread: ‘Classical/Opera singers who did VA’.

One of my opera bias, lovely Finnish lyric tenor Topi Lehtipuu, voiced the singing dub for the character Prince Cornelius in Don Bluth’s sublime and surreal THUMBELINA.

R8, Up and Toy Story 3 were both nominated for Best Picture.

I do like this movie, but every time I watch it I wonder why they made Mrs. Potts waaay too old to be Chip’s mother. I also wonder why the Beast’s servants were so loyal to him if he were such a dick.

Watch the Jean Cocteau film. That's the masterpiece.

Movie about bestiality? No, thanks. I've had sufficient.

R12, I also loooooove Hunchback of Notre Dame. It easily is my favorite opening of any Disney film (and Lion King is pretty spectacular). When Quasimodo starts cranking those bells and Clopin belts out that final note of the song...yep, goose bumps!

Kidnapping someone by saying you'll kill their father and holding them until they develop Stockholm Syndrome is so romantic.

R22 is correct. The Cocteau film is true to the story and beautiful.

r25 besides, if it was going to have any truth to it.. the genders would be reversed.

R24 it’s the D above high C!

[Quote] And every last inch of me's covered with hair…

I swoon every time. Take me, Gaston, now, deeply…

I absolutely hated The Lion King. Here’s a bunch of prey animals bowing down to their predators and a lion cub singing about how he can’t wait to be king when that would mean his father would be dead. It horrified me when I saw it.

That yellow dress was a symbol of centuries of patriarchal oppression over people with uterus and brave trans womens, that why I insisted to change it to look like a cheap supermarket dress to free my sisters and brothers everywhere.

Your welcome.

The animated Beauty and the Beast has little to do with the beautiful 1946 original film or the original story. It's pure Disney sludge - the animation is great but they should have changed the title so it wouldn't be confused with the original.

The opening is my favorite part of the film. The score won the Oscar, and rightfully so. "Beauty and the Beast" is my favorite Disney Rennaissance film.

R21 crockery does not go through menopause

R30 Lion King creeps me out for a number of reasons I cannot quite figure out, but those 2 you've listed are among them.

It's my favorite of the Disney Renaissance movies too. I have very fond memories of seeing it the first time. It was my first trip to LA. I was visiting a friend who was in school there around Christmas 1991. We met a group of his friends to watch it at the El Capitan. I was completely dazzled by the movie, the music, the theater, the pre show. Not to be to MARY! about it, but it was a very magical experience.

A gal in search of her husbear. I can relate!

[quote]Your welcome.

Oh, dear.

The beginning of Hunchback is indeed awesome. But "Out There" is an amazingly gay-coded masterpiece.

I can't even imagine how great Hunchback would have been if they had used this instead of God Help the Outcasts.

Belle is a really popular Disney costume. Kids that dress up like her are the smart ones. Sleeping Beauty kids are a yawn. Cinderella cosplayers are passive. Frozen kids have a lot of imagination. Mulanophiles will cut a bitch. Tiana wannabes are hard workers. Rapunzel children will grow up to get hair extensions. Kids that dress up like the Little Mermaid are a little out there. Life on land is too much for them or they’ll do anything to get away from their families. Cruella kids are sociopaths. Captain Hooks are gay. Peter Pans fight responsibility. Malificent impersonators will grow up to post on Datalounge.

I have watched and re-watched the “Be Our Guest” segment…. far too many times

Angela Lansbury is the heart of the film

Julie Zenatti and Patrick Fiori sing La Belle et La Bête (Beauty and The Beast) in the French version.

R41 roast me next! I was a Mighty Ducks bitch in the playground (even though I was horrible at sports and never got picked lol)

Yes, Cocteau's is the best,. I watch it at least once a year. Always makes me cry when Belle comes back & cries out Ma Bete & finds him dying. Also a great read is the book written about its being made. "Beauty & the Beast: Diary of a Film by J. Cocteau.

Great stuff.

[quote] I do like this movie, but every time I watch it I wonder why they made Mrs. Potts waaay too old to be Chip’s mother.

Honey, they're enchanted dishware, not actual people.

Teapots cannot actually give birth to cups (they have no reproductive organs), so you can stop being concerned she would have already been through teapot-menopause.

Mrs. Potts should have had an abortion, but she chose to give birth to a disabled cracked cup. Stupid Pro-Life teapot.

The good old days when movies and entertainment weren't ruined by "diversity" and "inclusion." I miss those times. I hope they too will have a renaissance.

Fuck off, scum R49.

R49 only owns white dishes

It’s decent for a Disney movie but it is massively over-rated. Disney’s best princess movie continues to be Cinderella.

There was no one for a gayling to crush on in Beauty and the Beast.

Aladdin and Hercules however..

Growing up on Long Island a a gay kid and having the Entertainment Gene, my straight brother got the Sports one, only 40 minutes from NYC door to door, we even went to Broadway shows as school trips. Imagine a legitimate day off from school to see a big Broadway show. So I really appreciate and feel lucky to have seen some of the world's greatest moments in entertainment.

Before "Beauty & The Beast" was released, Disney did something unprecedented, they played the movie unfinished at The New York Film Festival and I was there. And as this article describes, were enchanted from the first frame, it was an amazing night. Robby Benson was revealed as the voice of The Beast and came out after and talked and everyone knew what it would go on to do. The tragedy was Howard Ashman was gone from AIDS already and didn't get to see the success.

The "Work In Progress" version was such a success, Disney released it on Laser Disc and then on DVD, and coming full circle, I have the DVD, signed by Robbie years later and we talked about what a magic night it was.

[quote][R8], Up and Toy Story 3 were both nominated for Best Picture.

That's because they expanded the category to ten slots. They would not have gotten in otherwise.

BatB did it when there were only 5 and much harder to crack.

[quote][R17] OT but that should be its own thread: ‘Classical/Opera singers who did VA’.

R19 there's Nelson Eddy, who provided all of the voices in THE WHALE WHO WANTED TO SING AT THE MET segment featured in Disney's MAKE MINE MUSIC anthology film.

I love Beauty and The Beast. It was definitely the best film, for me, of the Disney resurgence following The Little Mermaid in 1989, although there were a lot of great films (Aladdin and The Lion King, especially). The score is excellent.

People in this thread have mentioned it, but Hunchback was quite strong but horribly married by the silly supporting characters (gargoyles) and some cringey moments that, I think, showed Disney's struggle to produce animated films that were widely thought to be intended for children but had increasingly complex adult themes. The result was jarring and uneven. They hit all of the right notes in this regard with BATB but we're much less successful in that regard with Hunchback. I will have to see if a "fan edit" exists for Hunchback that cuts out a lot of the sillier material to see how much better it could have been.

Hercules just never did much for me. It seems like it should stack up well against something like Aladdin, on paper, but doesn't pull it off in practice. I will have to rewatch that one (it's been years).

They had an amazing 5 year run with animated films from 1989 through 1994, but most of what came afterward had more flaws and unevenness than what emerged during that new, golden era. BATB was the best of the bunch, but considering Lion King and a few others were released in that same period makes that one even more special.

[quote]The good old days when movies and entertainment weren't ruined by "diversity" and "inclusion." I miss those times. I hope they too will have a renaissance.

I know what you mean. Wokeness is killing the arts, because talent and hard work are currently not being valued in the entertainment industry in the name of 'diversity' and 'inclusion.'

People in front and behind the scenes are being hired to fill racial/gender/whatever quotas, not because they have the skills/constitution for the job.

All that breeds is mediocrity, as we have seen.

And then you have the far-left propaganda being shoehorned in as well, which is just off-putting.

Disney needs a new Renaissance to redeem itself -- and Hollywood in general needs another New Hollywood Revolution like in the late '60s when sane moderates took control after 34 years of dictation by the religious right (aka Hays Code).

Only this time, they will need to take control back from the leftist radicals.

People forget but there was a lot of artistic freedom in the silent film era (1894-1929) and Pre-Code Hollywood (1929-1934).

Look how much creative freedom there was when moderates were in charge again of Hollywood (late 1960s to 2000s).

In the early 2010s is when leftist radicals began usurping the industry and imposing censorship that did not promote their far-left agenda.

And here we are now, but something's gotta give soon.

R1, I remember hearing differently, that the producers wanted a pop star voiceover for that number, but Angela wanted to sing it herself.

My marriage

Was the prince really a royal prince or just a young wealthy lord? And I assume during their cursed years they still maintained contacts with outside world for supplies , food etc.

[quote] a bunch of prey animals bowing down to their predators

It's the circle of life, dontcha know!

Who else thought the Beast was hotter in animal form and was disappointed when he transformed at the end?

Come on, fuckin admit it, y’all!

Girl you know it’s true! I love you!

Was hot when he transformed into Dan Stevens, but could never put up with that twat Watson

Gaston: "How can you read this? They are no pictures!"

3 minutes earlier: We are clearly shown pictures in Belle's book!

This is a wonderful film though and I wouldn't have been mad if it had won Best Picture over The Silence of the Lambs.

Yeah R58.

“I’ll do it, but you also gotta hire my (white) brother-in-law. “He’ll be good at this, I promise. “And he could really use a film credit.”

White men are the the only population stupid enough to think their prominence is the result of innate superiority and not hundreds of years of murder and subjugation

This one completely ruined the magic and the vibe .

r55, that's true, but that's not what r8 said (which is what I was responding to). BatB is the only animated film nominated for Best Picture when there were only five nominees, or the only hand-drawn traditionally animated film. But r8 said it was "the ONLY animated movie to be nominated for Best Picture," period. Unless you add the qualifiers, It was not.

R10, the orchestrations were by Danny Troob and Michael Starobin.

R17, Richard White may have studied opera but his stage work was in musical theatre.

I was nearing 30 when my husband (45) and I went to see it at the theater when it first opened. We were both entranced. The Be Our Guest sequence and the ballroom sequence were absolutely stunning on the big screen when you had no idea they were coming.

[quote]White men are the the only population stupid enough to think their prominence is the result of innate superiority and not hundreds of years of murder and subjugation

Please observe that the "hundreds of years of murder and subjugation" is due to innate superiority.

Interestingly, BatB first achieved prominence, and excellent word of mouth, when a “work print” was shown at the New York Film Festival, in the fall of 1990. Not all the finalized animation was completed, with some sequences still in b&w. It was received enthusiastically, sparking great interest in seeing the completed version.

This is the only Disney film I could ever sit through without checking how much longer Id have to suffer through it

Belle reads book which makes her a hardcore, raging feminist by Disney standards.

Here she is on her wedding night

r76 Talk about surprise anal!

[quote]r49 The good old days when movies and entertainment weren't ruined by "diversity" and "inclusion." I miss those times.

Well, at least you can reminisce about them at your KKK rallies?

r76 Lucky bitch . The man I'm into is very straight and/or not a chubby chaser.

Could never work out the adult subtext of this movie or the fairytale it came from.

The way for a man to become civilised is via kidnapping and forced marriage? Females shouldn’t be educated or have dreams of independence because it will only lead to fateful punishment? Women like brutal controlling men and bestial sex actually?

Here Belle is cheating on the Beast

The Beast (before or after transformation?) in the underwear that suit him the most. Yum.

I loved "The Little Mermaid" and "Aladdin" but this and the Lion King cured me of any Disney fandom I may have had. Hated them both.

RIP Angela Lansbury

Celine! Peabo!!