Beauty and the Beast: Belle’s Magical World (1998)

Starring: Paige O’Hara, Robby Benson, Jerry Orbach, and David Ogden Stiers
Grade: D-

The fact that Disney tried to pass this off as a movie when it literally consisted of episodes filmed for a failed TV show, thrown together because they had it laying around, is laughable.

Summary

Belle’s Magical World consists of three segments. Here’s a quick summary of each one to give you the gist of things.

The Perfect World:

Beast (Benson) and Belle (O’Hara) have lunch. As Belle tells Beast about the story of Cinderella, he starts to get uncomfortably warm because the hard-at-hearing Chandeleria (April Winchell), a chandelier, is too close to the table. He yells at Cogsworth (Stiers) to open a window, but everyone else starts freezing. Belle starts giving Beast shit for making everyone else freeze and Webster (Jim Cummings), the talking dictionary, starts announcing synonyms of words Belle says to him. Because of this, Beast bitch slaps Webster to the next century. Belle yells at Beast and storms out, refusing to leave her room. Later, Cogsworth, Mrs. Potts (Anne Rogers this time around), and Lumière (Orbach) all decide Beast should write an apology letter, though convincing him to do so will be difficult. Beast argues Belle should apologize to him, so Lumière and Cogsworth go to her room to ask her to apologize. She agrees but only if he apologizes first. Thinking quickly, Webster, a pen named Laplume (Rob Paulsen), and a stack of papers named Crane (Jeff Bennett) forge an apology letter acting as the Beast, and they send it to Belle. At the same time, Lumière is totally done with Chandeleria’s bullshit too because this is all kind of her fault.

Fifi’s Folly:

Fifi the Featherduster (Kimmy Robertson) explains to Belle how excited she is for the fifth anniversary of her first date with Lumière, as it is tomorrow. She assumes Lumière is going to do something elaborate but when Belle brings it up to him privately, he had no idea. Now, he is stuck scrambling to come up with something, so Belle decides to help him, especially after he almost set a room on fire trying to write a love letter and setting the paper ablaze accidentally. However, when they hang out, Fifi’s moronic self thinks that Lumière, a candelabra mind you, is cheating on her with Belle.

The Broken Wing:

After Beast tells Cogsworth he wants to meet Belle for a perfect lunch, a bird flies by the castle but is slammed up against it by the wind, injuring a wing. As the bird falls through the air, Belle opens her window at the same time, and the bird tumbles into her room. Armoire (Jo Anne Worley) talks about how Beast hates birds, but since Belle wants to help it, she hides the bird inside Armoire when Beast enters the room. He demands Belle meet him for lunch but softens his tone once Mrs. Potts convinces him to, and she accepts. However, Beast starts to smell the bird. Armoire almost gives up the bird’s position because of her allergy to birds, though she is able to get him out of the room in time. Now, Belle makes it her mission to nurse this bird back to health and somehow avoid the wrath of the Beast. Once he finds out about the bird however, he chases it and falls down a flight of stairs, hitting his head. He wakes up to the bird singing and appreciates it. Naturally, he decides to imprison it, so it can sing for him all the time. At the same time, Cogsworth starts losing his leadership from the staff because they start listening to Mrs. Potts more. So, he starts acting like a dick to everyone, including Lumière.

My Thoughts:

Well, this was easily the worst film in the Beauty and the Beast series, and it wasn’t even close.

After watching this, I thought to myself, “This seems like a scrapped cartoon series Disney was trying to make and just threw this together after cancelling it”. Turns out, it was EXACTLY that. Sometimes, I impress myself.

Now, I understand loving the characters from Beauty and the Beast so much that you want to make a TV series out of it but watching these three shorts have proven to me that not everything can be a television show. The first film served its purpose so well that anything after it would be too much of a retread. It can’t be original material because the whole entertaining part of the first movie was that they were turned into cursed versions of themselves, and you can’t do that over and over because it would be the same thing with less impact. You can’t replicate that terror in direct-to-video sequels without it feeling too repetitive, so you know damn well you can’t make a TV show out of it. So instead, in Belle’s Magical World, we go back to the entirety of the film taking place, timeline-wise, sometime in the middle of the first movie, just like how Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas was.

It just doesn’t work.

I do love these characters, but this franchise has been stretched way too thin. I understand making a show starring Aladdin, Tarzan, or Hercules because you can put the main character in fun adventures or missions all the time. With Beauty and the Beast, the characters and the story are just too limiting to take them anywhere, so it makes sense why a show never came to fruition. Messing around in and outside the castle is just boring after a while, and none of the characters’ problems seem that serious in the grand scheme of things. Even after watching this fake ass movie, everything was reaffirmed to me how this shit would get old fast. The Beast’s shtick of being this angry and bitter person gets old quick because in two of the three stories, he continues being the miserable person he is, turning into the villain that needs to be rehabilitated or taught at the end of each segment. If every episode of this supposed series revolved around teaching the dickhead Beast lessons on how to be a good person, not only would this be infuriating, boring, and predictable, but it would also make Belle look like the most patient woman in the history of mankind. Also, she’s a total sap. How can anyone put up with his shit for that long without trying to run away or not flip out? Doing this over and over again with Beast would be exhausting for anyone. Having her weep or go to her room every time Beast screams at her is just so overdone at this point that you either start to get bored, or you laugh at the overdramatic responses from the characters.

For instance, in The Perfect World segment, Belle runs to her room after calling Beast rude for slapping the fuck out of Webster, and she considers apologizing to him as she cries. What? Am I missing something? Why is she in the wrong here? Also, why is she crying over this? She was nowhere near this weak in the first two movies! Obviously, the Beast is wrong in this situation too, but we can give this a pass because he’s supposed to look insufferable. I just don’t get why she’s taking this whole moment so seriously. Honestly, Webster kind of deserved it anyway. The dude couldn’t read a room if his life depended on it.

In fact, the whole castle takes this measly fight so seriously that they all spring into action and risk their lives to try and come up with a solution. I get that they have to get Belle and Beast back on good terms to break the curse because of the rose’s petals falling, but how does no one see this argument between them as a bit of an overreaction and something that will pass by in a couple of days? When the whole segment is over and everything is solved, we also randomly get Belle singing a vague song about the situation, but there’s zero impact behind it because the problem was already over and done with. Why even include the song? Is there a quota Disney has to meet? None of the other segments had songs, so I’m not sure why this was deemed necessary. Furthermore, because of the fact that this was set up for a TV show, the look of the “movie” (if you can even call it that) is noticeably cheaper, especially if you’re binge-watching all four movies in a row. The colors look more pale than usual too, with the Beast having a totally different color design around the fur on his face.

Fifi’s Folly was easily the best segment, though that’s not saying much. This was mostly because Lumière had some funny lines. The plot was stupid on a whole other level though. Fifi honestly thinks Lumière is cheating on her with Belle? How would that even be possible? Do you think Belle is that desperate? What a stupid fucking feather duster! If Lumière is going to cheat, it would be with literally any other “object” on the staff, including the chandelier who he was clearly flirting with at the end of The Perfect World. The Broken Wing was below average. The situation felt blown out of proportion by these characters (once again), and I just couldn’t take it seriously because of it. Also, considering how “good” The Enchanted Christmas was, along with its supporting characters, this third film loses points for not including the great characters they introduced previously, like the Jewish axe guy and Fife. They were great additions to the franchise, so to forget about them really cost this movie some potentially entertaining (and humorous) storylines to add.

All in all, each segment on Beauty and the Beast: Belle’s Magical World was on a varying level of average, either above or below. Considering the quality, the animation, the idea that all of this once again took place during the timeline of the first film, the entire thing obviously being a failed TV show passed off as a “movie”, and the fact this is the worst film of the franchise makes this a pretty easy grade of a “D-“. With that being said, I didn’t hate it like how I would most movies with this grade. It’s just so incredibly subpar and lazily produced that it’s not worth anything more. They should’ve either (1) used the scrapped idea from the second film, (2) not done this movie at all and just thrown out the stuff from the failed TV show or (3) do something new entirely like having the Prince being able to switch back and forth between his human self and Beast self to fight crime like the Hulk.

Okay, the last suggestion I just came up with but that would be pretty entertaining, no?

Regardless, the main reason that this isn’t a flat-out “F” is because I still like the characters, there’s still some funny moments, and Lumière and Cogsworth get a lot of screentime which is definitely needed.