Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas (1997)

Starring: Paige O’Hara, Robby Benson, Tim Curry, Paul Reubens, Haley Joel Osment, Angela Lansbury
Grade: C

For the record, I will be reviewing a lot of direct-to-video Disney sequels on this website, so I’m not going to put in my reviews that “This sequel shouldn’t have happened” because that goes without saying. If I mentioned it in every review, I would sound like a broken record. With that being said, I’ll just review Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas for what it is.

Summary

We begin our story during Christmas time after the events of the first Beauty and the Beast. There’s a big Christmas party being hosted at the Prince’s castle. Following Lumière (Jerry Orbach) and Cogsworth (David Ogden Stiers) arguing over who saved Christmas last year, Mrs. Potts (Lansbury) decides to tell her son Chip (Osment) the story of who really saved Christmas.

We then jump backwards to when the Prince was still cursed as the Beast (Benson), and his whole staff were still cursed into being household objects. It takes place a little while after Beast saved Belle (O’Hara) from the pack of wolves in the first Beauty and the Beast, on Christmas Eve. The objects, led by Lumière, try to nudge Belle in the direction of Beast by having her meet him outside in the snow. As she teaches Beast how to ice skate, evil pipe organ Forte (Curry) plays an opera while his little piccolo minion Fife (Reubens) cheers him on, desperately hoping for a chance to play a solo. Since Forte hears happiness and gets angry, he sends Fife to tell him what’s going on outside the window since he can’t move from his spot (because he’s bolted to the wall). Fife sees Beast and Belle ice skating and gets his hopes up for Belle to potentially be the one to break the curse.

However, Forte is not cool with it.

He’s happy in his current form because he’s needed by the Beast now more than ever, to play music to make him feel better. He even considers himself to be the Beast’s best friend, so he sees Belle as an enemy that can ruin his position. Since he won’t be able to move from his spot, he sends Fife to go and ruin the chances of a blossoming Belle/Beast relationship. Fife goes out and tugs at Beast’s cape when they’re skating, causing Beast and Belle to crash into the snow. Initially, Beast doesn’t flip out, until he compares snow angels with Belle and realizes the shape he imprinted in the snow is still that of a monster. Because of this, he gets angry and leaves, with Belle thinking he’s a lost cause. Beast goes back to his room in the West Wing of the castle and confides in Forte. Meanwhile, Belle tells Chip about Christmas, a holiday he somehow has never heard of. Then, they discuss what Belle would want to give Beast for Christmas, with her deciding on a book because it’s what she would want. Later, Cogsworth puts down the Christmas idea because Beast hates the holiday, being that it’s a painful reminder of his past. However, he gives in once everyone reminds him of all the food they’ll serve for the holiday, with the kicker being Lumière talking about the Christmas pudding. Belle and all the objects spring into action, but Belle makes it known they need to make the place look a bit more festive, so Lumière leads her and Chip to the top of the tower to meet Angelique, the former castle decorator that is now a cursed angel ornament. She’s the leader of all the Christmas decorations but has been marooned in the tower because of Beast not celebrating Christmas in a while.

Though after a little song and dance number, everyone decides to help. As they start going into decorating hyperdrive, Cogsworth talks about how everything is cool, but Beast cannot find out.

Too bad Fife just watched the whole thing and snitches on them to Forte.

Beast is already mad that Belle is planning a secret Christmas bash, but Forte intensifies his feelings on the matter by making Belle sound like she knows his feelings about Christmas and just doesn’t give a fuck. Belle goes to the boiler room to grab a Yule log. but the Beast catches her in the act, telling her there will be no Christmas. Even so, she tells him she won’t stop in her quest. Despite initially getting a bit depressed, a conversation with Chip inspires her to have Christmas with or without Beast, and they decide to go out and get a tree, the last thing they need. Before the two go out though, she drops off her book gift in the West Wing. A pissed off Beast heads to his quarters, but Lumière is able to calm him by showing him that Belle got her a gift. Now in a better mood, Beast tells Forte to compose a happy song for Belle as his gift, royally pissing off Forte. Angered over what has transpired, Forte has to figure out a way to ruin Belle’s momentum. As Belle and Chip try to find a good tree to chop down outside, Forte plays his music super loud and has Fife whistle loud enough for the dog to go crazy and head back inside. This forces Belle and Chip after it, and they finally meet Forte and Fife. He feigns happiness over Belle’s Christmas gala idea but tells them how important the tree is, so he suggests they find one in the Black Forest.

Though Belle says she promised Beast she wouldn’t leave the castle grounds, Forte convinces her to go by making her feel guilty. Following their exit, Forte sends Fife after them with the goal of making sure they don’t come back, with the added incentive of letting someone else play Fife’s solo if he doesn’t do it.

Unfortunately, Beast wants to see Belle to show her the song, so this forces Cogsworth and Lumière to go search for her. Damn that evil piano!

My Thoughts:

I’m usually not too keen on prequels, but I guess to keep the characters in their cursed forms (because it’s what makes Beauty and the Beast, Beauty and the Beast), the writers had to figure out a way to keep them like that. Otherwise, the movie would just be a bunch of normal, happy people living in a castle. The sequel needed to figure out a way to get back to the curse. Well, the easiest way to do that is to just go back in time to when they were those versions of themselves. It’s the only way to try and recapture the magic of the original.

However, the original idea for the sequel was much better. Reportedly, Avenant, Gaston’s younger brother, was to be the villain. He would avenge Gaston by using magic to transform the Prince back into the Beast and frame Belle for it. Once I read this, I couldn’t help but think how this was a much more exciting idea than what we got, especially with Belle being framed. This would add a lot of conflict between all of the characters that adore her, as well as Beast who just started to trust and love her. Though I didn’t hate what The Enchanted Christmas turned out to be, it felt like too much of a step backwards. Also, I don’t understand how the characters of Forte and Fife are even included when neither one was mentioned in the first film. If you’re doing the movie in the manner they did, they need to explain why these characters were nowhere to be found (or even talked about) in the first film. The timeline places this whole narrative directly in the middle of the first movie, so there’s no way they wouldn’t have been brought up at least once, especially considering that the entire castle almost fell apart because of Forte’s enchanted music playing. Plus, Forte is placed directly in Beast’s lair in the West Wing in this film, and apparently, he’s been there since the beginning. There’s no way he would just be forgotten about. Considering Fife becomes a genuine friend of the group by the end of the movie, he would have had to make an appearance beforehand too. Instead, they just lazily hope you don’t care too much about these crucial details for the sake of churning out a sequel to one of their most successful movies. This is not only annoying but insulting as well.

Because of the way they just shoehorned this story into the middle of the first film, it almost felt like this sequel existed in an alternate timeline.

For this reason alone, I would’ve liked the original idea better. It would’ve still brought the characters back to their cursed forms, but it also would’ve been a continuation of the franchise that might actually be worth seeing. That story also highlights Belle in a much more important way, instead of the cute simpleton she seems to be in this movie.

Belle in this sequel feels a lot more helpless this time around. She doesn’t seem like the headstrong girl we fell in love with in the first movie. Early on, Belle seems to be trying too hard for the Beast to like her when it should be the other way around. It doesn’t have to be entirely in this direction, but I felt like Beast wasn’t even trying to win over Belle. Belle shouldn’t care more about this curse than he does, but here, he almost never compromises and seems like more of a villain than ever before. She should be a lot tougher and much more independent. It’s the whole reason we loved her in the original film. In The Enchanted Christmas, she looks clueless at times and seems perfectly fine getting by on her overall sweetness. That’s just not the heart of the character. It’s part of her personality, but there’s much more to her than that. They stripped her of her best traits to suit this story. It’s obvious. With the Beast, they play a flashback of the fateful day when the Prince turned down the shelter for that old lady, retconned as Christmas day in this film, and got himself and the whole castle cursed. Before the lady walked in, he was acting absolutely despicable. He even acted like a spoiled child to Lumière, the most likable guy in the whole movie. I get that this whole story was to be redemption for the bad person he was before, but I felt like the storybook narrative we got in the first film was quite enough. Actually, showing us the flashback made me hate this dude even more, even with some of the heroic things he does in this sequel. It was kind of hard to get over once you watch this scene.

Don’t yell at Lumière dude. Lumière is cool as fuck. Yell at Forte all you want. His music was trash.

Admittedly, Forte was an intriguing villain that did add a lot. The always deliciously evil Tim Curry did a solid job in bringing the underwritten character to life. Making him the only character that was computer-generated also made him a lot more memorable too, enhancing his evil look. I thought his motivation for everything, and subsequently not wanting to return to his human form, was incredibly weak though. You’re asked to play music more often, so you’re cool with being bolted to a wall and being a pipe organ for the rest of your life? If you want to play your music so badly and the Prince won’t let you, get another job! No person in their right mind would be totally content in being the position he’s in. Notice I said “right” mind too. He’s not an insane person, he just has his priorities mixed up. If you wanted this reasoning to make sense, you need to make him borderline crazy because that’s the only way I would buy someone saying this with a straight face. He legitimately said, “Humanity is overrated”.

Really? You want to play your fucking piano that bad? It’s not that serious man.

Despite Forte’s genuine outrageousness, he was nonetheless a welcomed addition to the Beauty and the Beast franchise. This extends to the funny little Fife, played unrecognizably by Paul Reubens of Pee-wee Herman fame, the French-accented Angelique who’s a nice foil to Lumière, and the show-stealer that was the Jewish axe voiced by Jeff Bennett. Of all the legitimate laughs that came from The Enchanted Christmas, most of them belonged to him. He was actually really funny, and I’m mad they didn’t come up with his character sooner. As soon as he entered the movie in the boiler room sequence, he stole every scene he was in. I loved it when he complained about having a headache at the same time Belle uses him to chop down a tree, acting super passive-aggressive about the whole thing. Supporting characters in animated Disney movies are essential, especially in the direct-to-video sequels because sometimes they might be the only saving grace of them. Here, we get a lot of them, and they are actually good enough that I wouldn’t mind seeing them again in future sequels.

For a direct-to-video movie, Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas delivers on bringing back our characters for another go-around, while adding new ones that don’t take away the limelight from our stars. There are some definite issues that can’t be ignored though. The plot is a bit muddled because of the confusing narrative taking place in the middle of the first movie, what we loved about Beast and Belle in terms of personality are somewhat compromised to give us a more cookie-cutter sequel, and the motivation for our villain flat-out bothers me. If you don’t take things too seriously, you’ll still find a lot of positives in the movie. I know I did. You just have to get past some minor annoyances to enjoy it. Once that happens, you’re golden. All in all, it’s one of the better direct-to-video sequels we’ve gotten from Disney, despite its flaws. It’s not on the level of the Aladdin sequels, but it does the job.

Regardless, it’s a hell of a lot better than Belle’s Magical World.