Disney Sequel Showdown: "Beauty & The Beast: The Enchanted Christmas"

Disney Sequel Showdown: Round #4

Beauty & The Beast: The Enchanted Christmas
Directed by Andy Knight
Starring Paige O'Hara, Robby Benson, and Tim Curry

Well Christmas is over but it doesn't mean the glad tidings of the season have to stop! So long as you keep the Christmas cheer in your hearts, and the DVDs of your favorite Christmas specials at the ready! Everyone's got their favorites, from Elf to The Grinch and Santa Claus Is Comin' Town, and if Beauty & The Beast: The Enchanted Christmas is one of your favorites…why?

During a recent stint of Christmas shopping I came across this Disney direct-to-video sequel of old on DVD for ten bucks, and impulsively purchased. I hadn't seen this thing in a decade or so. You might say nostalgia combined with a decent price led me to buying it. Well as Christmas came to a close I sat down to watch it, and sadly this is not one of the better Disney sequels. Is it downright horrible? Not "entirely".

Also spoilers ahead. Do you care? Probably not. It's a Disney sequel from 1996.

The film is told primarily in flashback, and tells us how Belle (O'Hara) brought Christmas back to the castle, much to The Beast's (Benson) disapproval. The Beast hates Christmas. Why? Well it turns out the night he, his castle, and his servants were cursed was in fact, Christmas Eve. That's…neat? Jury's still out on the value of that twist.

Also I find the timeline of this film to be incredibly flimsy. Like it's supposed to take place after the wolf attack in the original but then where does it fit in? Before the library scene? No, because that's supposed to happen like a day after the wolf attack and he wouldn't wait like a week to give her the library. Before "Something There"? I mean that would make sense if it weren't for the fact that by that point in the original they were starting to get along and The Beast is a total dick here. Ugh, I'm getting ahead of myself.

Well it turns out that there's a villainous pipe organ named Maestro Forte (Curry), who used to be the castle's composer before the enchantment. Before the enchantment, The Beast had no use for Forte, and now The Beast uses his gloomy instrumentals as a source of comfort. So Forte likes this new sense of purpose and refuses to let Belle and The Beast fall in love and brake the spell. So he manipulates events through the workings of a piccolo named Fife (Paul Reubens. Paul Reubens is in a Beauty & The Beast film. That's wrong.) hoping to derail Belle's Christmas plans and have the castle remain enchanted forever.

Alright well to expand further on that "Beast is a dick" comment, someone pretty much hit the reset button on character development here.  Belle and The Beast's whole dynamic is wrong. The Beast is supposed to be changing by this point so Belle can learn to like him. Here, Belle is like his super-optimistic girlfriend trying to get him out of his emo funk. The Beast wasn't a dating project for Belle to work on. She was his prisoner for God's sake, and yes while she did make the best of a bad situation, she still missed her father and her old life.

Okay and then at a critical point in the film Belle leaves the castle grounds to go find a Christmas tree, and things get life-threatening. Beast finds her, rescues her…and then locks her in the tower for braking her promise to not leave. But she already broke that word when she ran into the wolves! And arguably at that point The Beast was probably being even less of a dick! So why does "running away from you being a dick" not equal imprisonment but "trying to make sure you have a Merry Christmas" does??

Now Im starting to get into nitpick territory but Forte, his ability to make music, it like, creates magic energy or projections? That he uses during his song (Yeah of course Tim Curry has a song) and the climax of the film. Okay, where's the logic in that? The Enchantress was just whipping up her spell and was like "Hmm, give the composer-turned-pipe organ magic powers." Well then why didn't she give Lumiere fire powers, or Cogsworth the ability to manipulate time and space?? I know this is a Disney movie and magic can run willy nilly, but in the first Beauty & The Beast it was established that these people just got transformed. No more. No less.

The songs in the film, are pretty bland, both on the sides of lyrics and music, although Tim Curry's song is pretty enjoyable. There's a song about Lumiere and Cogsworth's friendship, and it's catchy enough, but why is it here? It adds nothing to the film. There's no subplot about them. My guess it was left out of the original or the Broadway show and they shoehorned it in here. Animation is an obvious downgrade but it's nice given direct-to-video standards and the time it was made.

It's nice to get all the original voice cast back and they're all still giving it their best (despite the material…). Tim Curry is his usual enjoyable self as Forte, and I like the twist in his character wanting to remain enchanted. Paul Reubens as Fife is okay. Bernadette Peters features as the castle decorator turned into a Christmas tree angel, which is clever and she does a nice job. But…going back to nitpicking here!

We meet her in the attic with a bunch of other Christmas decorations. Look at an average Christmas tree, there's probably 30-40 ornaments up there. Now a tree by royalty standards? Probably hundreds. Who were all these people that they became ornaments??? What was their position in the castle that they got a special, seasonal curse? The Castle's Christmas Planning Committee?? And does this mean there's a bunch of poor bastards stuck in the attic transformed as Halloween decorations? Sorry I'm nitpicking I know, because in "Be Our Guest" we saw like hundreds of plates, glasses, etc. but it makes sense there would be all those! People will argue with me about this but oh well.

Beauty & The Beast: The Enchanted Christmas works in a way that passable fan-fiction works. It's not poorly made…if you don't mind forsaking character development and decent songs. Another rewrite or two and this could have been a worthy successor…by direct-to-video standards. If this is one of your favorite Christmas specials, then I won't take that away from you. It's not a disgrace and it's not unwatchable, there's some good intentions here. If it isn't or if you haven't seen it, strictly stick to the original (It's my favorite Disney film and my favorite film of all time), and pay attention to far better Christmas specials. Personally, this will probably remain at the bottom of my Christmas DVD collection. Happy Holidays.

Disney Sequel Showdown- "The Lion King 1 1/2"

Disney Sequel Showdown: Round #3

The Lion King 1 1/2
Directed By Bradley Raymond
Starring Nathan Lane, Ernie Sabella, Julie Kavner and Jerry Stiller

So this just came back into my head. It's late, I can't sleep, so let's talk about another Disney sequel!

Well I've already knocked two Disney direct-to-video sequels, follows up to Pocahontas and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, I did say there were some decent ones in the canon. The Lion King 1 1/2, despite that ridiculous title, is probably one of, if not the best of the Disney direct-to-video sequels.

Where The Lion King is an adaptation of Hamlet,  The Lion King 1 1/2 is sort of an adaptation of Rosencrantz & Guilderstein Are Dead. The film takes us through the original again, but from Timon and Pumbaa's point-of-view. But before the "Circle of Life" begins, we get to see what life was like for Timon (Lane) back in his meerkat colony, complete with his mother (Kavner) and Uncle Max (Stiller).

After botching up a stint on sentry duty involving some familiar hyenas, Timon leaves home to find his place in the world. Along the way, he meets his future best friend Pumbaa (Sabella), who joins him on his quest to find their own patch of paradise. From there, the events of the first film run its course, but again it's their side of the story. We see what they were doing during some of the original's key scenes, including some that we didn't even know they were around for.

Perhaps Lion King 1 1/2's greatest strength is that it doesn't take itself seriously, right down to it's Mystery Science Theater 3000 set up of Timon and Pumbaa watching the film in a theater. It's a sequel to one of the greatest animated films of all time, but it's not going try to match it. It's going to be it's own thing. That was a coming-of-age story of a young prince, this is a buddy comedy/satire, that actually has a lot of laughs at the expense of the former.

All that aside, there is still an emotional Disney core, and that comes from the relationship of our two leads. It's always nice to see filmmakers successfully take sidekicks, and make them three-dimensional characters. Of course, you know they didn't do that on their own. Timon and Pumbaa have been around for years, were already loved by the public, and had two other films and a tv show before this. While this is a Timon & Pumbaa film, Timon is the star. It's his hero journey, and while Pumbaa does go through his own emotional arc, it spawns from Timon's.

The animation here is rather good despite this being a direct-to-video release (This was around the time these films started getting higher in quality, and were no longer being recycled episodes from a cancelled tv show stapled together. Looking at you, Belle's Magical World and Cinderella II).
The music is fine, featuring some catchy original songs, reprises of ones from The Lion King, and some from outside sources that are used for jokes and pop culture references.

I'm not surprised that nearly every cast member from the original film returned for this, with the exception of Rowan Atkinson as Zazu (Seriously what the hell was he doing that he couldn't be bothered?). I mean this was a sequel to what was at the time, Disney's most successful animated film (This was all B.F….Before Frozen.) Anyway, they're all great. Disney always knew how to put together a good voice cast for a film. New additions Julie Kavner and Jerry Stiller as Ma & Uncle Max provide a good amount of laughs, even though you can clearly tell that Kavner is the voice of Marge Simpson, and that Jerry Stiller is…well Jerry Stiller.

So to recap, if one should ever find themselves in a situation where you had to watch a Disney sequel, this is without a doubt your best option. I myself do actually get the urge to rewatch it from time to time, because it's just a fun, harmless film. The Lion King 1 1/2 is not one of those sequels that's better than the originals. Lord no. For what it is though, it's a fine film, and that's really nothing to fuss about. Hakuna Matata.