That “tale as old as time, song as old as rhyme” returns to the screen, now in 3-D. But “Beauty and the Beast,” the greatest animated film ever made and one of the screen’s great musicals, hardly needs this sort of sprucing up.
A timeless French fairy tale about a cruel young man cursed to live as a beast in his enchanted home if he cannot change and be worthy of another’s love, it features sparkling wit, lovely songs, stunning animation, terrific vocal performances by Paige O’Hara and Robby Benson as the leads and just enough Disney cute to earn that overused label “masterpiece.”
There’s marvelous new depth of field to the images – flowers or rain or snow in the foreground – in many scenes. Details from the background pop out more – a fishmonger’s customer waggling a fish at him, unacceptable because there’s a cat dangling from the tail.
And 3-D does give Gaston’s riotous bar brawl and other fights more of an in-your-face quality. But at other times, the limitations of cell animation are thrown into sharp relief, character movement made jerkier by the conversion.
No matter. It’s still glorious, from story to songs to vocal performances to the message that this non-princess Disney princess tale from 1991 passes on: Don’t let custom and social restrictions hold you back. Be yourself, girls, especially if you “want much more than this provincial life.”