Beauty and the Beast: Belle's Magical World

Disney made another direct to video midquel to Beauty and the Beast in 1998. Set after Christmas but before the fight against Gaston, Angela Lansbury and Haley Joel Osment were replaced by Anne Rogers and Gregory Grudt. As with The Enchanted Christmas, it also was received poorly.

The film consists of four episodes to an unreleased television show loosely woven together in a feature length story.

In the first, Belle (Paige O’Hara) and Beast (Robby Benson) stop speaking to each other after a fight. But the dictionary Webster (Jim Cummings) forges a letter of apology with a pile of papers named Crane (Jeff Bennett) and a quill named LePlume (Rob Paulsen).

The second has Fifi (Kimmy Robertson) believe Lumiere (Jerry Orbach) is cheating on her with Belle.

The third features Belle throwing a surprise party for Mrs. Potts (Rogers).

The fourth consists of Beast learning to overcome his hatred of birds.

Every criticism I had with The Enchanted Christmas rears its head again here. The old characters continue to be derailed and the new characters aren’t enjoyable. Plus, any semblance of an actual consistent story is thrown out the window in favor of telling it in the form of episodes.

If Disney couldn’t get a Beauty and the Beast animated television series up and running, why did they think it would do well as a film? This would have been one of the better times where Disney should have left well enough alone.

But there’d be another sequel in 1999.

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Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas

Disney’s 1997 Christmas video release was a direct to video midquel to Beauty and the Beast. Starring most of the main voice actors from the original film, plus Paul Reubens, Bernadette Peters, Tim Curry and Haley Joel Osment, The Enchanted Christmas has not been very well received.

Set around the Christmas season in the middle of the events of the first film, Belle (Paige O’Hara) wants to celebrate Christmas. But the Beast (Robbie Benson) won’t allow it as Christmas was when he was transformed. Forte (Curry), an organ, and his music have been the only thing keeping the Beast happy. He wants to remain under the curse as he didn’t have any significance in the castle before then. He uses his lackey, Fife (Reubens) to break Belle and the Beast apart.

The only good thing this film has going for it is Tim Curry. Because no matter what crappy film that man is in (like Ferngully), he’s always able to provide an enjoyable performance.

It’s a shame Disney thought the story of Beauty and the Beast needed to be continued in some manner. Because here, we have things that didn’t need to be seen, old characters who get derailed, and new characters that are, mostly, unlikeable with a plot forced into the events of the first film with all the gentleness of a speeding locomotive.

Bear in mind, this takes place between Belle running away and getting attacked by wolves and Beast giving her the library.

For one, as said above, Beast hates Christmas because it was the night the enchantress transformed him. The first film showed this via stained glass window. This film outright gives it a fully animated sequence, thus ruining the beauty and charm of the original telling.

Then there’s our old characters. In the first film, Cogsworth, Lumiere, and Mrs. Potts had an idea of social norms and that falling in love takes time. Here, they want to rush everything without any care of how social graces work. And Belle changes from someone who acts like her life completely changed (BECAUSE IT DID!!!) to happily loving her life and joyously giving Beast lessons on ice skating.

And then we have the new characters. Bernadette Peters as the castle decorator got turned into a Christmas angel. She got locked into a tower with all the other servants turned Christmas ornaments and pretty much spends the film telling Belle how celebrating Christmas would be a bad idea, but helps her anyway. We also have a Jewish axe that spends the majority of his time in the film kvetching with Jewish humor. But it’s not funny.

The kicker is, I hear this is the better than the other Beauty and the Beast sequels.

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