Some may disagree but I really love this movie. It's certainly 'decent' by even someone who wasn't keen.
The soundtrack is really lovely too, I love 'stories' and 'as long as there's christmas' (particularly the reprise with angelique).
The other sequels for The little mermaid, pocahontas and the hunchback of notre dame wern't good at all.
And I agree--this movie's fantastic, especially for a Disney sequel. Most of them were of very poor quality. But here you've got a strong plot, excellent music, good animation, fascinating new characters as well as the entire cast of the original still almost fully in-character, wonderful voice work, etc. 'Tis brilliant!
I liked Ariel's Beginning enough, but for the most part The Little Mermaid 2, Pocahontas 2, & The Hunchback of Notre Dame 2 were bottom-of-the-barrel stuff. I only liked a few things about each, which were not enough to salvage them.
EDIT:
Okay, not even going back into all that stuff below again...just no. Puttin' it up here because I want it visible, but not dredging up unworthy subject matter.
'Cause first of all: There's nothing unbelievable about Gaston and his plot. The only people in the tavern when he made it clear exactly what he wanted to do were obviously seedy types who idolized him and were willing to go along with it. The rest of the (rather dopey) villagers still trusted him as a good guy. I don't understand why this is confusing. "Poorly thought-out motive"? Yeah, he was an egomaniac who wanted the woman he considered the most beautiful around. It's pretty stupid and lame because he's stupid and lame, all right?! But people and characters like that have existed since forever. He thinks his "manly perfection" entitles him to whatever and whomever he chooses.
He, all the other characters, and most people in our world think Belle is the prettiest woman in the movie. What's the obsession with the danged triplets?! Why do they keep coming up? Beauty is subjective, in the eye of the beholder; they definitely did not "outclass Belle in aesthetic beauty!" Maybe in one person's opinion, but certainly not in most opinions--and Gaston's was the one that counted the most, because he's the dude who had the hots for her. You can find the Bimbettes more attractive, that's fine--but you'll be in the minority. Either way, though, the point is that they contrast with Belle by demonstrating and representing outward beauty alone, without depth.
Belle's not stupid. It's plainly obvious that she DID NOT *WANT* to use the mirror to reveal the Beast's existence to the crowd, but she was thrust into a desperate position with very few other options at the moment for proving her father's & her own sanity. Yes, she probably knew that bad things were going to happen no matter what she did right then, but c'mon; who would've done much differently? I'm sure she hoped that the mirror would display an image of him being calm and gentle-looking, but of course no such luck. How one could even attempt to fabricate a "Belle's an idiot" argument is incomprehensible. She never did a thing to intentionally harm or endanger anybody.
Belle's inner beauty is MORE than apparent in the original.
Wow. "Being a jerk" to the Beast...really. "Being a jerk" to the gigantic bully who imprisons people in a dank old castle for life simply because they "trespassed" on his property. "Being a jerk" to THAT guy by deliberately exploring the one place she was forbidden to go (well, DUH), without having any idea what the rose meant. Yeah. Okay. Sure. She was a jerk. Right. XDD
(And frankly, all of your constantly ridiculous Belle-bashing is kooky. She's not flawless, as no good character should be, and you're not obligated to love her. But geezus. Anyway, she's probably my 5th favorite princess after my rock-solid top 4--who are Merida, Elsa, Ariel, & Anna.)
The bleeding triplets/Bimbettes again?! They're minor characters. THEY WERE IN THE TAVERN WITH GASTON WHILE HE MADE IT MUSICALLY CLEAR THAT HE WAS GOING TO FRAME MAURICE AND BLACKMAIL BELLE. So now how exactly do you imagine them to be "internally beautiful?" We know nothing about them except that they're stereotypically fawning, swooning, shallow, vapid fangirls--to the point of going along with their crush's wicked plans. Don't remember any of them trying to warn Maurice or Belle. Nice excuse about them being waitresses and therefore possibly not hearing the full song. Doubt it. Pretty loud song, not that big or crowded of a pub. The entire bloody village wasn't there. You can't argue with the film. Those who WERE in there with him were in on it, and worshiped Gaston enough to go along with him. They weren't going to challenge him. They too mocked and ridiculed poor Maurice, and had no problem with Gaston achieving his desire through dishonest means because they were not much better than he. Again, I have no idea why this would be confusing!! I've never seen anyone else so confused by it that they bring it up a million times. It's nothing like a dictator telling or not telling the world his true intentions; it was a guy surrounded by a bunch of people he knew wouldn't go against him. I don't think that ought to be too difficult to grasp.
Forte IS a more manipulative, secretive, enigmatic villain. And he & Gaston are drastically different kinds of people. Fife isn't really comparable to the tavern folks who were complicit in Gaston's scheme; he was a good and sweet, if meek, guy, who naturally had to be bribed into doing anything that struck him as immoral. He admires a magnificent Maestro, rather than a musclebound meathead. x-p Plus, the meathead did carry out the next steps of his plot in relative secrecy, involving only LeFou & the asylum owner. The insistence that he told the entire town and that they were all okay with hurting Maurice & Belle is just flat-out incorrect. His little secret was safe with the people who knew about it.
This whole thing is such insanity.
How in the world did Belle act like a condescending jerk to anyone?!? She was nothing but perfectly polite and friendly toward the villagers...!!! Not once was she a jerk toward anyone who didn't deserve it. WHAT the heck movie did you watch?!?!?!?
Oh, never mind. I can recognize trolling when I see it.
Oh, my, goodness. Of course religion is not going to be referenced in a Disney film. Or even most family holiday films. It's entirely unnecessary. The holiday season is celebrated by all sorts of people for reasons common to everyone. Being religious (in any way) doesn't make someone a good person (very frequently it seems to have the opposite effect), and many of the best people in the world are nonreligious.
I also agree that Forte should've been in the original film; if only they'd known about him then. Dx He is a very strong and well-developed character.
We don't know what would have happened to all the enchanted objects had the last petal fallen and Beast remained beastly for all time. I've always assumed that they would either remain as they were (why would you assume that they'd "die" by becoming literal objects?), or return to human form. I mean, the enchantress couldn't have been callous enough toward all of them that, in teaching the cold-hearted prince a lesson, she would first sentence them to remain in the castle with him during his "punishment period," and THEN allow them to die just because HE didn't learn how to love and earn love...could she? I don't believe so. My headcanon is that the spell essentially suspended time for all of the object-people. When they return to human form, they will be as old as they were the night the spell was cast. That way, the enchantress did not unjustly rob them of years of their lives--but left them with Beast as company, and to help him reform and break the curse.
This brilliant headcanon also involves Forte being reassembled, and revived once the spell breaks. ;) It's the only way for justice to be properly served in this story, dangnabbit.
As for the Little Mermaid sequels...they both could've been much better. I preferred Ariel's Beginning due to the inclusion of Marina, Benjamin (OH, how I do love that manatee), and Athena. I'm more okay with Return to the Sea now than I was when it first came out, because I've had time to adjust and look for its strengths, but it was a definite disappointment that only seemed to rehash the original plot in reverse. I wanted to like Melody more, but wound up finding her kind of dull, and being actually more intrigued by Morgana...even though she was merely Ursula's skinny, revenge-seeking sister. With two cool rays for henchmen. And who wasn't even mentioned at all in the first, which you'd think would've happened if the sea witch had an also-dangerous relative, but suddenly she appears. Okay, so maybe she had lived in another part of the sea and wasn't recognized as a threat following Ursula's death.
I felt more OOC-ness from the second than the prequel, but yeah, that one should have had more of an attempt to mesh sensibly with the original. It's a bit of a stretch to accept, but I suppose as long as any future Ariel-inclusive films are guaranteed to be high-quality instead of direct-to-video-quality, I can accept these and still demand better. Something fully worthy of the original masterpiece, and showing a Melody I can find a little more interesting & likable. I mean, she's the daughter of my first favorite Disney princess--of course I want to love her. I don't dislike either Morgana or Marina...the latter was just a more comical, less-threatening villain for a movie that was supposed to be less serious & more light-hearted.
And Radcliffe? Yeah, he's not the MOST popular or impressive Disney villain...more of a pompous, glittering windbag than the menacing, dastardly, yet magnetically attractive threats that most others are. Still, that's just the way he was supposed to be, and nothing in Pocahontas is lessened because he isn't Scar or Jafar or anybody else. Loved David Ogden Stiers' voicework there, too.
LOL, Sarousch! He was one...unusual villain. Props to Michael McKean for playing him so creepy and kind of pervy. How else to follow up ol' Judge Claude? 6; But yeah. Diamond underwear. xD
Oh, and 'Finwick'=Lampwick. ;)
Agreed with you with Enchanted Christmas, and it actually improved in various areas compared to the film. One especially noteworthy bit of improvement was their actually doing an effective, realistic villain in the form of Forte, since he did actually keep his true goals and agenda secret to all but Fife, and even then he made sure to give him a pragmatic reason for supporting it. Oh, and he manages to be a villain without actually making any of the main protagonists look completely stupid as a result. That's definitely a huge improvement compared to Gaston, who had too many lucky breaks in the film (the whole reprise to his Gaston song is especially bad with this, considering he pretty much flat-out exposed what he intended to do in graphic detail to ensure that he was exposed as a total scumbag) and had a really poorly-thought-out motive as well (So, he basically wanted a trophy wife regarding most beautiful woman in the village in terms of aesthetics, even when even choosing one of the three triplets would have more than ensured it compared to Belle, especially when one of the triplets alone far outclassed Belle in aesthetic beauty, never mind all three together?), not to mention the only reason there was even a good-versus-evil battle in the climax is because Belle was extremely stupid to actually expose the Beast to what was clearly a mob, not to mention her stalker was among them even when he had proven himself to Belle to be the type to either organize said mob for the specific purpose of blackmailing her into marrying her or otherwise being opportunistic enough to try and blackmail her anyways, either way, it should have been as certain as the sun rising in the east what said stalker would have done the very second he got any indication that Belle loved Beast more than him.
Another thing the sequel improved on immensely was with their actually making Belle's implied internal beauty significantly apparent, not to mention actually showing her to be completely innocent of the event that required her to be saved. One of my biggest problems with the original film was that the moral came across as extremely broken due to some of Belle's actions clearly going against purity of heart, which is what internal beauty actually is. The triplets had more hints at actually being internally beautiful than Belle herself did, despite their being foils and crushing on the main villain Gaston. I mean, she acted like a condescending jerk to the villagers even when, Gaston aside, none of them actually did anything genuinely bad to her (so they comment that she's odd. Big whoop. I freely acknowledge that I'm somewhat odd due to being autistic, so I don't see any reason for that to be an indication of being treated terribly). She also treated the Beast like a jerk back to him despite Beast at least making amends towards his earlier behavior to her, and her stupidly entering the West Wing despite being told not to not only by the Beast, but even his servants (and even if you argue that the Beast viewed her as his prisoner, which is unlikely given his treatment of her afterwards, the servants most certainly didn't) and nearly literally ruining Beast's diminishing chances of becoming human by almost destroying that enchanted rose by accident. Plus, the ending of the film, as mentioned above, had Belle grabbing the idiot globe (something so idiotic you can't even call it the idiot ball due to being much larger than that) by exposing the Beast's existence in front of a mob and her stalker, thus all but ensuring Beast and his servants were endangered due to her stupid actions in saving her father from the asylum.
Probably the only real gripe I have with the film is that they don't exactly place any emphasis on how the holiday is supposed to be the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, our savior (that would have at least showed Belle as being religious enough to acknowledge that), but oh well, you can't have everything.
I didn't exactly like TLM2 when it was first released, and to some extent I still don't, but I wouldn't even say at present it was bottom-of-the-barrel stuff. Ariel's Beginning is a far better fit for that category, especially when unlike TLM2, Ariel's Beginning didn't even attempt to connect with the first movie at all (having a lot of plotholes and disconnects from the original film. Say what you will about TLM2, at least it tried to pay respect to the first film's plot), not to mention made the characters extremely OOC. Besides, the Special Edition actually seemed to improve significantly on the movie anyways, even including a character song for Morgana that actually elaborated on her motives, a huge improvement considering how she was crappy in the original release (not as bad as Marina del Ray, mind you, but still pretty bad). Honestly, at least TLM2 had Ariel and the other cast having matured as an excuse for their being somewhat OOC, TLM3 not only made most of their cast OOC to the original film, they don't even rectify it by the end via Character Development which they should have done by virtue of it being a prequel film. I can't comment on Pocahontas 2 (though to be fair with that movie, it at least improved significantly on Governor Radcliffe's character, who was very unpopular due to being an extremely ineffective villain) or Hunchback of Notre Dame 2, since I never saw them in full (though I might agree with you on the latter based on the trailers including Sarousch's diamond underwear comment).
I dislike virtually all of the disney sequels that I've seen and I loathe what they represent.
However, this movie is a guilty pleasure. Granted it does not fit with the original film and the characterization is, for the most part, muddled and simplistic at best. Still, I think it actually manages to create a really enjoyable christmas atmosphere. The songs are also above average as far as these sequels go, and the new characters are at least interesting and original. Though it may be somewhat redundant, as all these sequels are, it's not without it's merits. Of course it can't touch the original, it's still an enjoyable holiday movie.
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I absolutely agree with you. I don't get why this film get such a negative reviews. I really love the fact how this film goes more in depth with Prince Adam turning into a beast and we got to see his true nature on how he treated people as a human from the very start.
Don't be calling me no bitch! If I'm a bitch, then your mama is a bitch, BITCH!
I totally agree! Its' good to see the beast as Prince Adam (or vice-versa).
None of the Disney sequels are strong, but this one trumps them all. It's good, enjoyable & entertaining, it still has the magic from the first film...in terms of the characters not changing, still being likable etc etc.
Whereas in Pocahontas and the Hunchback sequels, it felt like you were literally watching different characters. It also didn't help that with those two sequels in particular, it was really poor animation & no input from the original creators of the first films.
I'd actually like to watch an edit of the Enchanted Xmas where it is slotted into the appropriate time frame of the first film, making watching B&Rb nearly 3 hours long :D
I completely agree with you both! (And about the song "As Long As There's Christmas," too.) This is one of the sequels that's actually high-quality (not like the original feature film, but relatively very good) and believable. The level of care taken with it is evident.
shareI love it.
shareI agree. It's less than perfect and doesn't hold a candle to the original, which is not just one of my favourite animated films but one of my favourites ever. However, as far as the Disney sequels go it's easily one of the better ones, especially regarding the music, the voice acting and villain. Generally it's also one of the better-looking sequels and the story, even when questioning how it fits into the timeline, to me has charm and holds my interest.
"Life after death is as improbable as sex after marriage"- Madeline Kahn(CLUE, 1985)