Beauty and the Beast: Belle's Magical World

The original is a masterpiece, and The Enchanted Christmas is actually not that bad at all. This film is alright, but a lot of the animation is shoddy, and the songs are instantly forgettable. At least Enchanted Christmas did more than adequately in those two aspects. The storyline was merely a series of vignettes, like the sequel to Cinderella. If I had a preference to which I prefer, storyline-wise, this one raises the bar. Lumiere (though less elegant and debonair) and Cogsworth are funny here thanks to the brilliant voice overs of Jerry Orbach and David Ogden Stiers, but why was Belle changed? She did very little, other than preach to the characters. As for Mrs Potts, the reason why she was ruined, was because Angela Lansbury didn't voice her. The stories are okay with nice ideas, with a bit of humour from Lumiere particularly, but the essence of the original was lost. The best was "Fifi's Folly" but all three stories had problems of their own. The message was laid on way too thick, and in general the writing was uninspiring. And there were some bits about Beast's character that was unnecessary, like him hating birds. I can swear that wasn't mentioned in the original! Though I will admit that the bird was really cute. I will give this a 6/10, in respect to the voice actors. Bethany Cox.