Starting with The Little Mermaid in 1989, Disney hit a decade-long resurgence – a critical and commercial high that had been missing since the death of Walt Disney in 1966. The films of the Disney Renaissance took a different approach to production than their predecessors, and formed the films around the musical numbers rather than the other way around. Not to mention those musical numbers were spearheaded by lyricist, Howard Ashman, and composer, Alan Menken, who were really just coming into their stride as a team with the release of The Little Mermaid. You may remember my mention of them from my Little Shop of Horrors review. Chasing the success of The Little Mermaid, Ashman and Menken were instructed to halt their work on another project, Aladdin, to save the confused production of Beauty and the Beast. It is widely believed that the genius push for Calypso/Island music for The Little Mermaid was Ashman’s idea, and it was also supposedly his idea to make Beauty and the Beast a dramatic, Broadway-style production. Another stroke of genius that made Beauty and the Beast a worldwide success and critical darling, and holder of the distinction of being the first animated picture to be recognized by the Academy with a Best Picture nomination (back when there were only five nominees in the category), though it lost to The Silence of the Lambs (one of the few examples of the Academy getting it right).

An enchantress, under the guise of a beggar, seeks refuge at a prince’s castle. However, the unkind and grossed-out prince turns her away. The enchantress reveals herself and curses the prince and his castle, turning him into a hideous beast and his staff into household furniture, with a time limit: if the Beast is unable to find true love before the last petal of an enchanted rose falls off, he will remain a beast forever. And his furniture will remain furniture. Meanwhile, in a nearby village, Belle is the peculiar single woman who likes to read and think for herself. Eww. Her inventor father is also a pariah because he’s a little off his rocker. There is one man in the village who does desire Belle’s attention: Gaston – a hunter who uses antlers in all of his decorating and sees Belle as only a beautiful bearer of children. What a guy. Maurice leaves the village on a trip to show off his latest invention, an automatic wood chopper, and is attacked by wolves in the forest. Seeking refuge, he knocks on the door of the Beast’s castle and is promptly imprisoned for trespassing. When Maurice’s horse returns home, Belle fears the worst and goes out looking for her father. She finds him trapped in the Beast’s castle and offers to take his place, which the Beast, in surprise, cautiously accepts. Belle is allowed to live in a room in the castle, but is forbidden to approach the west wing where the rose is kept. She defies the rules of the house and the Beast kicks her out. In the forest, Belle is attacked by wolves, but the Beast rescues her, and they return to the castle where Belle nurses the Beast’s wounds. They fall in love, as you do in these types of situations, and end up dancing together in the ballroom, thanks to the help of the furniture. The Beast offers to let Belle use his magic mirror to check in on Maurice, but when she views the mirror, she sees he is in the forest again trying to find her and on the verge of death. The Beast releases Belle from the terms and conditions of her imprisonment so she can rescue her father, but lets her keep the mirror to remember him by. Belle brings her father home, where a mob led by Gaston is waiting to send him to an asylum. Belle uses the mirror to prove Maurice isn’t lying about the Beast, and the villagers, again led by Gaston, add torches and pitchforks to their mob, and march to the Beast’s castle to kill him. The furniture fights off the mob and Beast defeats Gaston, but lets him live – a rookie mistake. Gaston fatally stabs the Beast, but then falls to his death like an idiot. Belle holds the dying Beast in her arms and professes her love for him just as the last rose petal falls. They all live happily ever after.

Walt Disney had off and on tried to make Beauty and the Beast as early as the late 30s. It struggled to get off the ground and was considered DOA after the release of the 1946 French version. It was shelved until The Little Mermaid proved a return of the fairytale genre was in demand. Ashman died of AIDS just months before the release of Beauty and the Beast, and a lot of stock has been put into the idea that the film is full of allegorical references to the AIDS epidemic. It has been argued that Beauty and the Beast was in the right place at the right time and all the pieces just fit together so perfectly, but I believe that has been proved categorically false through the film’s longevity. This tale as old as time is timeless and it became the blueprint of every Disney animated film that followed it.

Bonus Review: Aladdin

Aladdin was released the year after Beauty and the Beast, and as I mentioned before, was a passion project of the late Howard Ashman. Tim Rice, collaborator with Elton John on The Lion King, The Road to El Dorado and Aida, replaced Ashman after his passing to help finish the project. Aladdin was not the first Disney production to use celebrities for the voice cast (The Great Mouse Detective had Vincent Price voice the evil Ratigan, and Oliver and Company included both Billy Joel and Bette Midler among its cast), but it made it the trend with the success of Robin Williams as the iconic voice of the Genie.

Princess Jasmine is unhappy dealing with suitors so she can be married to a prince before her next birthday, according to the law. She sneaks out of the palace to spend time among the commoners in the bazaar, and there, she meets Aladdin. Together, they steal away from the crowd, but are soon caught by the palace guards. Princess Jasmine reveals herself to the surprise of both Aladdin and the guards, and Aladdin is imprisoned for “kidnapping the princess”. In prison, Aladdin is met by Jafar (the Sultan’s royal vizier) in disguise, telling him of the Cave of Wonders and the treasure inside. If Aladdin will grab a lamp for Jafar, he is welcome to anything else within the cave, even though the cave clearly says to “touch nothing but the lamp”. Aladdin grabs the lamp, but his pet monkey, Abu, is a little too greedy and touches another jewel. The cave erupts into chaos and Aladdin and Abu are only able to make it back to the entrance with the help of a magic carpet. Jafar betrays Aladdin after being handed the lamp and is left in the now-enclosed cave to die. However, Abu reveals he got the lamp back just before the cave closed. Aladdin rubs it and the Genie appears, granting him three wishes with a few provisos. Without technically wishing for it, Aladdin convinces the Genie to get them out of the cave. Aladdin promises to use his third wish to set the Genie free, but in the meantime, he wishes to be made a prince so he can skirt around the law and woo and marry Jasmine. Without the lamp, Jafar’s plan to take over as Sultan is ruined, but his pet parrot, Iago, comes up with the plan for Jafar to marry Jasmine and then kill both her and her father so he can rule uninterrupted. Prince Ali arrives in Agrabah to great fanfare and immediately woos the Sultan, but struggles to do so with the Princess. However, he uses the magic carpet to his advantage and takes her anywhere she’d like to go. During the night out, she deduces that Prince Ali is Aladdin, but Aladdin doubles down and says he’s really a prince and only imitates a commoner to get away from palace life. Jafar has the guards kidnap Aladdin and throw him into the sea, and he ends up having to use his second wish to be freed. Upon his return, he reveals Jafar’s evil plan, but Jafar escapes. Iago steals the lamp and brings it to Jafar, who uses his first wish to become the Sultan. His second wish is to be made a sorcerer, and with his new powers, he sends Aladdin to Siberia. Thanks again to the magic carpet (who is doing the real leg work here, let’s be honest), Aladdin returns and fights with Jafar who turns himself into a snake. Aladdin tricks Jafar into using his third wish to be made a Genie, knowing the confines of the whole Genie gig. Freed from the reign of Jafar, the Sultan changes the rule so that Jasmine can marry who she wants. She chooses Aladdin (duh), and Aladdin makes good on his promise to set the Genie free for his third wish.

“Aladdin and the Magic Lamp” is part of the One Thousand and One Nights – a collection of Middle Eastern folktales compiled together through the framing of Scheherazade, a woman who is married to a ruler named Shahryar, who hates women and decides that every time he marries, he will kill his bride the following morning. Whatever, dude. Scheherazade circumvents her fate by telling Shahryar a story at night, but leaves it unfinished. Shahryar’s desire to see the story through to the end is forced to postpone killing his new wife until the following day. However, that next night, Scheherazade finishes the story, only to start a new one and leave it as a cliffhanger as well. Smart chica. Each tale she tells becomes part of the One Thousand and One Nights, or Arabian Nights, as it is later called by us Westerners. Probably the three most well-known stories from One Thousand and One Nights are “Aladdin and the Magic Lamp”, “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves”, and “The Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor”, are not original to One Thousand and One Nights. They were added later, during the first European translation in the 1700s by French archaeologist, Antoine Galland, who heard them from Hanna Diyab, a writer from Syria who frequently visited Paris. I’m sure there’s something to be said about these stories’ appeal to Western readers versus the original tales, and plenty has already been said about the contrast between the appearances of Aladdin and Jasmine and the other Arabian characters in Disney’s Aladdin, but I would like to at least mention my own views on these subjects: drawing attention to stories that are which in history and culture from other countries, even through a bastardization of those stories, is still a net positive if it pulls us to explore those histories and cultures.