Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas (November 11, 1997)

This is the first of three sequels to Beauty and the Beast. The film begins with the inhabitants of Beast castle, who are human again, getting ready for Christmas. The decide to reminisce about the first Christmas after Belle arrived which occurred not long after the Beast saved Belle from the wolves. The villain in this story is human toward organ who actually prefers the way he is because he is the Beast’s confidant. He thusly decides to have his lacky sabotage the Beast’s budding romance with Belle. This plotline really feels like the screenwriters were grasping at straws to find some sort of conflict to drive the movie along. It is Ludacris that a human would prefer to be an inanimate object that is chained to a wall in a castle. The Beast hated Christmas because it was on that occasion that he was cursed by the witch. Belle, on the other hand, wishes to bring back Christmas despite this and so defied the Beast’s wishes. Eventually the Beast comes around and they live happily ever after- with the movie ending back in present day with the current Christmas. The animation again looks cheap, because it is direct-to-video, and varies in quality from scene to scene. The look of the organ, Forte, is particularly off-putting because it is the only character created used computer animation (and bad quality at that!) The voice actors from the original return- though the quality is considerably lower (I almost did not recognize them!) There are a few new songs as well, but they fail to live up to those of the original. The returning characters are fine they keep their original personality. The new antagonist, however, while his voice actor does a great job, falls flat. Overall, Th Enchanted Christmas is a simple Christmas tale, released to capitalize on the success of Beauty and the Beast (and it shows!) I am sure children will enjoy it but otherwise there is no reason to watch it. You are better off re-watching the original film.

Final Rating: 4/10