Beauty and the Beast is a 1992 animated film by Golden Films and GoodTimes Entertainment about the story of Beauty and the Beast. In 1999, Golden Films made another version of this story without the help of GoodTimes.
Suffering from financial troubles, a single father goes into town to look for gifts for his three daughters. His youngest, Beauty, only asks for a rose, and he manages to find one at the castle of a mysterious host who welcomes him, feeds him, and lets him rest there for the night. But plucking the rose was a big mistake, as the host turns out to be a Beast who values his roses more than anything else in the world. The father must pay for his crime with his life, but after he reveals he did it for his youngest daughter, the Beast offers him a chance to take Beauty to die in his place. Though the father doesn't want to, Beauty goes with him anyway. Fortunately, the Beast changes his mind and makes her stay a comfortable one, obeying her every wish and giving her everything she wants. But her feelings for him may be put to the test when the Beast agrees to give her a week to visit her worried family, as the Beast will die of loneliness if she doesn't return in the given week. As if that wasn't enough, a mysterious fairy warns Beauty not to be drawn in by his kindness, and Beauty's sisters grow envious of the rich lifestyle she enjoyed in her stay with him.
These tropes are useless:
- Adaptational Villainy:
- The evil fairy's clearly going out of her way to convince Beauty to abandon the Beast so he will die.
- This can also be a case of Adaptational Attractiveness to the ugly evil fairy from Villeneuve's version, but with the flipside of a heroic character having Adaptational Ugliness which is downplayed with Clara, who is the good fairy.
- Adapted Out: In the original story, Beauty had three brothers, but she only has two here.
- All-Loving Hero: Beauty, who strongly desires to believe in the goodness of everyone, including the Beast and her sisters. Unfortunately, her sisters take advantage of this and the Beast almost dies because of it.
- Almighty Janitor: Clara is a mere servant to the Beast, but she is skilled enough in magic to defeat the Enchantress and make Beauty and the Beast/Prince rule the land forever.
- Beauty Equals Goodness: Played straight with Beauty (who's beautiful both inside and out) and her sisters (who are both ugly and cruel). Inverted with Clara and the Enchantress.
- Big Bad Ensemble: There's Beauty's sisters Alicia and Pauline, and an evil fairy who is constantly trying to separate Beauty from the Beast, and is revealed to be the one who enchanted the Beast in the first place—and also Clara's evil sister.
- Big Good: Clara, after revealing herself as the evil fairy's sister, is implied to be this for the entire movie. Judging from the way she advises Beauty to decide for herself how she feels about the Beast, instead of listening to hearsay from others, it looks as though Clara's been working all this time to subtly try and undo the curse her sister put on the Beast.
- Cain and Abel: The villains of this movie in a nutshell. Alicia and Pauline are Beauty's mean sisters, and the unnamed evil fairy is Clara's evil sister.
- Crocodile Tears: Alicia and Pauline cry these to keep Beauty from returning to the dying Beast.
- Death by Despair: The Beast not only claiming that he will die of loneliness without Beauty (even though Clara is still at the castle with him), but somehow knowing that he can only be apart from her for 7 days before he dies
- Disney Death: The Beast goes through this when Beauty returns too late to save him. Fortunately, Beauty finally agreeing to marry him brings him back to life and turns him human again.
- Distracted by the Luxury: Once she finds out the Beast isn’t intent on killing her, but only asks that she not leave the castle, Beauty takes the nice room and fine dresses she’s given afterward as a sign that he’s truly gentle and kind.
- Dull Surprise: Beauty doesn't show much in the way of emotion, even when gasping.
- Dumb Blonde: Beauty comes off as an unintentional example, mainly due to her naive, well-intentioned desire to see the best in people, which proves true for the Beast, but regarding her sisters, it made it easy for them to trick her into believing they really do care about her. Her apparent habit of spacing out and coming off as slow on the uptake certainly doesn't help. And neither does the fact that many of her expressions seem rather vacant.
- Everyone Has Standards: Beauty's mainly known for being a very patient and loving person, but after her sisters repeatedly insult her during the opening, she seems visibly annoyed, indicating even she's got a limit to how much of their nastiness she can brush off.
- Expository Hairstyle Change: To signal that significant time has passed during her captivity, Beauty's hair grows considerably longer. Presumably, it was intended to show that she's become more carefree.
- Expy: Clara is one to Mrs. Potts, right down to the similar clothing. That said, while she looks like Mrs. Potts and serves a similar function, her personality and attitude is much grumpier and more frank than the original. To be fair, she is also arguably based on the good fairy from the original story, although the main thing they have in common is being the evil fairy's sister.
- Face Death with Dignity: When Beauty first meets the Beast, she does her best not to lose her composure upon meeting the thing that is supposedly going to murder her. While she's waiting for the Beast in his dining room, she starts to cry, but then immediately tells herself to stop out of a desire to remain strong.
- Fat and Skinny: Alicia's the fat to Pauline's skinny, yet, interestingly, it's the skinny sister who's always falling over and acting clumsy, much to Alicia's annoyance when she even lampshades it.
- Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Beauty is the only blonde seen in the story, and appropriately is innocent, demure, and altruistic.
- Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal: The Beast wears a fancy jacket and boots, but, rather jarringly, no pants.
- Hate Sink: Alicia and Pauline do everything they can to get the audience to hate them, being lazy, vile bitches.
- Heel–Face Brainwashing: Discussed when Beauty's cruel sisters treat her nicely and beg her to stay with them. If only she were so lucky...Beauty: Perhaps the magic of the Beast is letting you feel these things after all these years.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Beauty is more than willing to give herself to the Beast as soon as her father lets it slip that the Beast gave him a chance to spare himself if his daughter goes instead.
- Horrible Judge of Character: Beauty's father, who unknowingly hired thieves. This might not have been so bad, but his sons saw right through them from the get-go.
- Hypercompetent Sidekick/Almighty Janitor: Clara is the only person who works in the castle, yet she keeps the place spotless, prepares all the meals, and tends to the roses and keeps them blooming even in winter. It helps that she does have some magical abilities, but it appears she does most of the housework by hand. Beauty is implied to be helping her while living in the castle. Clara's also the one who saves the day when she fetches Beauty, after her sisters manipulate her into staying a day longer to make the Beast die.
- It's All About Me: The minute Beauty returns to her family, her sisters immediately voice their disgust that she's still alive and believe all their suitors will turn their attention to Beauty.
- Jerkass: Alicia and Pauline.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold:
- To compensate for the fact that he's about to kill Beauty, the Beast gives her family a giant chest of jewels and gold, which they use to move back to the city. He also decides shortly thereafter that he can't bring himself to kill Beauty after all, either because he's already fallen for her, or because he realizes that she was innocent in all this.
- Clara, a grumpy, somewhat Deadpan Snarker who's not afraid to speak her mind, but loyal to her master and prone to giving Beauty advice on trusting her instincts.
- Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: Alicia and Pauline cry for their father when he goes to be killed by the Beast...because he will no longer be there to take care of them.
- Karma Houdini:
- Beauty's sisters received no consequences for almost getting the Beast killed. The evil fairy, on the other hand...
- Likewise, the biggest perpetrators of this trope are the men who robbed Beauty's family of their fortune at the beginning of the film.
- Kick the Dog: Alicia and Pauline easily guilt trip Beauty into sacrificing herself to the Beast saying it was her fault because she wanted a rose, and it becomes less about their father taking care of them and more a sort of sick eagerness to finally get rid of Beauty.
- Kindly Housekeeper: Clara tries to cheer up Beauty upon their first meeting and seems to genuinely care for the Beast's welfare, even with his Jerkass tendencies.
- The Klutz: Pauline has a tendency to fall over, much to Alicia's chagrin.
- Lazy Bum: Alicia and Pauline do absolutely nothing except spend their father's money when they were originally wealthy, whereas their brothers helped run the family business and Beauty devoted her time doing charity work. After they became poor, the two still spend most of their time lazing around and barking orders at Beauty.
- Light 'em Up: The enchantress, whose powers manifest as an intense sunlight. She loses that magic, even so much as her glow, when her curse is broken.
- Light Is Not Good: The enchantress is the main villain here. She manifests herself in bright golden light and her apparition to Beauty even looks slightly divine.
- Lovable Coward: Robert is implied to be this.Nathan: Robert and I can go with you! Between the three of us, we can overpower the Beast and kill it!Robert: Uh..."we"?
- Manipulative Bitch: Alicia and Pauline manage to manipulate Beauty into staying longer than the week given to her so that the Beast will die. The enchantress was probably meant to be one as well, being supposedly a spanner sort of villain, but she comes across as a moron.
- Missing Mom: Beauty's mother is neither seen nor mentioned. Her father, meanwhile, plays a large role in the story.
- My God, What Have I Done?: "What have I done? What have I lost?"
- Nice, Mean, and In-Between: Beauty's the nice, Alicia and Pauline are the mean, and Nathan and Robert are in the middle, being nicer than Alicia and Pauline but still thinking Beauty should let the Beast die when she returns home.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: The Old Man sounds very much like Walter Brennan.
- No Name Given: Continuing the tradition of most versions of this fairy tale leaving the father unnamed, Old Man's real name is never said here. Same goes to the Beast, and the evil fairy.
- Odd Name Out: Nathan, Robert, Pauline, Alicia, and...Beauty.
- Papa Wolf: The Old Man finally shows this just after he's about to leave Beauty at the Beast's castle. When the Beast is prepared to give the Old Man a fortune far greater than he originally had as compensation for losing his daughter, the Old Man flips his shit and starts yelling at the Beast that nothing could possibly compensate for the loss of his daughter. The only reason a fight doesn't break out is that Beauty begs him to stop for her sake.
- Extra points to Old Man—when he gets outright indignant at what he sees as a slap to the face, the Beast gets just as angry and warns that he will kill him if he doesn't leave right this very second. Instead of backing down, Old Man gets even angrier and looks like he's about ready to kill the Beast himself. As mentioned above, Beauty stops them both.
- Public Domain Soundtrack: True to Golden Films, most, if not all, of the background music is this.
- Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: "I...am...a...beast."
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Clara gives one to the evil fairy following the Beast becoming human again. Clara drags her by the ear and shows her Beast and Beauty are alive and happy.Clara: Look at that, they're gonna get married! Get it, you miserable wretch?! Your curse is broken and now you're powerless!
- Related in the Adaptation: In Villeneuve's original version of the fairy tale, the heroine was the daughter of a king and a good fairy. A wicked fairy had tried to murder the heroine so she could marry her father, and the heroine was put in the place of the merchant's deceased daughter to protect her.
- The Resenter: Alicia and Pauline can't stand Beauty for a variety of reasons. They both think Beauty actively tries to make them look bad in front of their dad by being such a hard worker, and they can't stand how she's able to attract male admirers so easily. The sisters were eager to get rid of her so they wouldn't have to keep measuring up to Beauty.
- Serious Business:
- Picking a rose has a penalty of death.
- Apparently, being away from the woman you love for longer than a week will kill you.
- Skewed Priorities:
- Eating all of the Beast's food and crashing for the night was perfectly acceptable, but picking the roses was just crossing the line. To be fair though, the former two were provided for the father.
- The rosebush in the castle courtyard was forbidden, but cutting the roses in the greenhouse is fine. Again, in fairness, this is while Beauty is living at the castle, and she's not stealing, she's helping Clara with the gardening.
- Soundtrack Dissonance: We hear happy, uplifting music in the background when Beauty is about to be executed and she cries her heart out. Lampshaded in Phelous' review.Phelous: Well, obviously, Beauty is distraught now. Let's set the mood. [Beauty crying over uplifting, goofy music]...Or play it like it's a wacky scene. Your choice, movie.
- Talk Like a Pirate: The harbormaster.
- Took a Level in Kindness: The Beast relearns kindness thanks to Beauty's influence.
- Totally Radical: Hilariously, the harbormaster at one point says to Beauty's father "I'm terribly sorry, man.", which feels rather out of place, given the time period.
- True Blue Femininity: Beauty's main ensemble consists of a blue dress.
- The Ugly Guy's Hot Daughter: The merchant is a short, fat older man with a large bulbous nose. But his daughter, Beauty, certainly lives up to her name.
- The Unfavorite: Pauline and Alicia both think they're this, while Beauty's their dad's favorite, often accusing her of sucking up to him. Although the Old Man does seem proud of Beauty because of how kind and generous she is, he never exactly berates Pauline and Alicia for not being more like Beauty. At no point do either of them ask: if their dad really didn't like them, why would he allow them to keep spending all his money?
- Ungrateful Bastard: Beauty's two sisters tried to let the Beast die and Nathan cheerfully suggested to let the Beast die, despite the fact that the Beast is the one who gives them good fortune.
- Verbal Tic: Beauty's father has a tendency to gibber in his sentences.
- Villain Has a Point: Subverted. While Beauty did want a rose, neither she, nor her father, could've known the act of taking one would infuriate the Beast, and as even Alicia and Pauline point this out, their eagerness at the thought of Beauty dying completely outweighs any logical reasoning.
- Furthermore, since the Beast had never shown himself to Beauty's father up to that point and everything else that he could possibly need was seemingly provided to him by the castle itself, it was a reasonable assumption that taking one single rose from a huge bush of them as a gift for his beloved daughter would be okay, too; while the old man turned out to be wrong in assuming this, there was also no indication that he wasn't allowed to take one of the roses.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Clara thoroughly chews out Beauty on staying a day more than she agreed, telling her the Beast's life is at stake.
- Yank the Dog's Chain: A year after Beauty's family were robbed of their fortune, they learn one of the Old Man's ships finally came to port, and it's the biggest one they owned. Unfortunately, the ship's a total wreck and its cargo has been left useless due to several storms. The Old Man is told the ship's only good for scrap.
- You Will Be Spared: The Beast changes his mind about killing Beauty, finding her too beautiful to do so.
