Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas (1997)

Rating: 20%

Now believe it or not to you who've seen this movie an knew it was bad right away, I loved this movie as a kid. Yeah, yeah, I know. "H.A.K., what the heck?" "how is that even logically possible?" "Can you really put those words together in a sentence?" "Just...HOW!?!?!?!" Well what can I say? Generally as a kid, I guess I kinda liked any movie that I didn't find extremely boring beyond belief and even then, Beauty and the Beast is one of my favorite Disney films so it was a little natural to me to like this. But at last I see the light after watching it for the first time in years. Heck, I"ll even sing it. (singing "At least I see the light" slightly revised)  "And at last I see the light and oh boy did I take my time. And at last I see the light, and I'm glad for how long it's been. All at once everything is different, now that I saw it again." But enough of me being ridiculously silly, let's get on with my review for Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas.

Plot: It's been about a year since the events of the first movie and everyone is celebrating Christmas. Lumiere and Cogsworth argue over who saved the Christmas before the enchantment was lifted. So Mrs. Potts set things straight by telling the actual story. The events of Christmas last year take place shortly after the Beast saves Belle from the wolves. Belle tries to being Christmas into the castle not caring that the Beast forbids it. Meanwhile, the attempts to bring Belle and the Beast together are being foiled by Forte: the music composer of the castle who was turned into a pipe organ and wants the enchantment to be permanent due to the Beast relying on his music for comfort ever since the enchantment was cast.

Yeah, this is an incredibly cheesy movie. A lot of the lines were terrible, hardly any of the music was good, and there were so many plot holes. For instance, *WARNING! SPOILER* why is it no one remembers that particular Christmas after one year? I mean if there's ever a reason the tell the story in flashback, they could've just gone with telling it to the visitors of the castle. Or maybe better yet, just Belle's father who was standing next to Mrs. Potts when she told the story. Also why would Forte destroy the castle when he's in there too. And what did they do with Forte or the damage he did afterwords? Because it sounds like they just left his corpse there for all eternity. I mean imagine the west wing being the place where both Belle and the Beast sleep and...do other things after they get married and have kids and so on in one side of the wing while there's a dead man in the other room. And what even happens to Forte when the enchantment is lifted? And when Forte falls, what's with Belle and the Beast being right in front of him yet far away when he crashes. But at the same time to me, there's still little portions of the songs and a bit of the character Forte and the story all around where I feel like, given to the right people, this could've turned out to before a pretty decent film.

Characters:
Belle: oh good golly was she especially cheesy. I mean the whole 'trying to bring in the Christmas spirit' is pretty cheesy to begin with but it's worse that they've done that to Belle
Beast: Yeah, the whole hating Christmas thing was cheesy. But you have to admit, when it comes to why he hates Christmas they were on the right track.
Forte: Now what particularly got me into loving the movie was Forte. I thought he was just plain awesome. I mean he uses music to make earthquakes, illusion, and these beams that are used to just...knock people over which isn't very evil or even handy for that matter...BUT I STILL THOUGHT IT WAS AWESOME!!!! Now that I've seen this movie again where I'm so much older and wiser, I find the character very poorly developed. I mean in a way the idea of the character still works because he's potentially insane and stuff like that, but they didn't get much into that. And I thought his lines were just terrible! I mean luckily I still thought the climax with him was still cool. But really, I thought that while this character couldn't ever be something worse than Hannibal Lecter or something like that, I feel that with the right hands, this villain could've been SO much more!


Music: the music was horrible. I mean Forte's "Don't Fall in Love" song was definitely one of the worst villain songs ever. Although when it comes to "As long as there's Christmas" I thought the chorus was nice...the first half for sure.

And that's my review for Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas. I finally am fully aware with how horrible this film is, but at the same time I still have a soft spot in the sense that with the right people, it really could've been a really good movie.