Despite being one of Disney’s best movies to date, Beauty & the Beast never got an official sequel. This normally wouldn’t be seen as odd given the film didn’t leave much room for follow-up stories nor could take anything more from its original 1740 French fairy tale, but during Disney’s period of direct-to-video sequels, the famous 1991 animated musical did not receive a direct continuation despite other films in the same category like The Little Mermaid, Cinderella, and Aladdin, getting more than one. This isn’t to say it escaped the curse entirely, as it did receive two non-theatrical features that aren’t very well liked by any who saw them; the 1998 Belle’s Magical World (a truly awful cheaply-animated flick that was obviously just a pitch for a television series) and the 1997 Christmas film, The Enchanted Christmas, which while superior and performing well enough to not be a total laughing stock, isn’t warranting of any cheer either.

Set during the period where Belle (voiced again by Paige O’Hara) has become the prisoner to The Beast (voiced again by Robby Benson), her spirits remain somewhat cheerful as Christmas time nears, yet she learns from the castle’s inanimate servants; Lumière, Cogsworth and Mrs. Potts (voiced again by Jerry Orbach, David Ogden Stiers, and Angela Lansbury) that the holiday is forbidden in the castle as the Beast resent Christmas (as it was the day he was cursed by the Enchantress). Desiring to brighten up his miserable life as well as give a proper first Christmas to Chip (voiced by Haley Joel Osmond), Belle tries to do everything she can to give the castle and its inhabitants a merry Christmas, although she faces resistances from Forte (voiced by Tim Curry), the castle’s music conductor turned into an organ who enjoys his new form, and uses his timid sidekick, Fife (voiced by Paul Reubens) to keep Belle and the Beast from falling in love in order to keep his toxic power over him.

The Enchanted Christmas is not the worst thing to come from this sequel period for Disney but calling it anything more than a cheap recyclable trinket would be very disingenuous. You can feel the attempt from the people involved to make something good out of this, but with a forgettable story, flat characters, and uneven music and imagery, it doesn’t come close to the magic of the original.

Given the nature of the original story, the themes about love and forgiving one of their past actions, and the wintery landscape that movie adopts during the fledgling period of the lead’s romance, making a holiday-themed film for Beauty and the Beast makes sense (albeit a little forced), but given the original film feels elevated above what Disney normally releases (even during one of their best periods within the Disney renaissance), there would be even more pressure on its shoulders to not tarnish its reputation with a mediocre follow-up. Sad to say that it wasn’t able to live up to the expected threshold, as while The Enchanted Christmas is at least known by most audiences and sold well enough on V/H/S, few to any people would claim it’s a good movie, let alone a worthwhile follow-up to Beauty and the Beast. While it might be interesting to explore this unseen period of Belle and Beast growing closer together, nothing of worth comes out of this very predictable and lazy story, which follows a very straightforward direction and is so minute in its conflict and swerves that it can only barely sustain its already tiny 72-minute running time.  While not feeling as TV-coded as Belle’s Magical World, very little about this movie feels film-quality either, with the animation, music and stakes all feeling pretty mundane and failing to capture the simple beauty and poignancy that came with the original film and tale.

This isn’t too surprising given who was responsible for this movie and how it was conceived, with director, Andy Knight, and screenwriters; Flip Kobler, Cindy Marcus, Bill Motz and Bob Roth, all stemming from television departments for Disney or other studios, and therefore, predictably produce a property that appropriately feels small-screen worthy. While this movie is incredibly mediocre and offers very little for most aside from kids who just want more Beauty and the Beast, it’s hard to truly get mad at it, as you can tell the people involved are trying to make it work and even feel like the original film, with a similar animation style, some moments that are at least trying to explore the complicated situation the characters are dealing with, and a sense of heart that (while very basic) is still present, so it’s more of a very inoffensive waste of time with a fancy label placed onto it rather than something that is warranting of anger.

For a small-scale, seemingly small-budgeted feature, it was nice to see all of the original voice cast return for this film, even if none of the material really feels worthy of their talent. These characters are very iconic and were brought to life very well in the original film thanks to these very talented performers and their great designs, and that charm is still slightly retained even in this weakened state and feature. The person who feels the most notably different is Belle, who went from a character who may claimed was overly perfect, but had enough range of emotions to still come across as a likeable character, into a person who’s a little too smiley and feels a little flat on the expression side (most likely due to the cheaper animation budget). It’s always great to hear Paige O’Hara (especially when she’s singing) and it’s not like Belle feels entirely different in this picture, but you can tell there isn’t as much effort to explore these roles and rather just accentuate their most obvious attributes. This is also clear with Beast, who is still voiced and animated with the same kind of childishly animalistic rage, but is played more goofily as opposed to tragically (again, not really a problem, just a noticeable difference).

This film is clearly more comfortable animating the inanimate characters than the more humanoid ones, as while they can occasionally have some awkward facial expressions, the household appliances still have a lot of life and personality to them, even if they actually don’t contribute that much to the story. Lumière, Cogsworth and Mrs. Potts are great characters, and they are still wonderfully performed by Jerry Orbach, David Ogden Stiers and Angela Lansbury, but in terms of what they provide to the story in any compacity (be it song number, plot progression, or even comedic levity), it’s surprisingly minimal (Chip ironically carries the most out of the cast). There’s an angel ornament voiced by Bernadette Peters who is slightly memorable despite her limited screentime, and Paul Reubens is also okay as Fife (even though he’s also underused), but easily the best and most compelling part of this movie is the villain, with Forte being a really great idea for a threat in the Beauty and the Beast world, and everything surrounding him is incredibly well done. Tim Curry’s voice is deliciously villainous, his entirely CG design is so otherworldly and helps him stand out in a 2D-animated space, and the element that he enjoys his cursed state and wants to remain in his new form in order to feel useful to Beast by keeping him in his depressed state is such a fascinating motivation that hasn’t been tackled with this world before, he’s easily the best part of this movie.

Given the lower budget and status of this direct-to-V/H/S film, it shouldn’t come as any surprise that the visuals aren’t on par with the original film, but it does at least deserve a little credit for trying to emulate the style and push to make it look above what’s expected of it. Being the studio’s first direct-to-video film to be created with digital ink and paint, the color palette, linework and smoothness on some of the characters makes it at least look above other Disney sequels that would come later, and at least slightly mirrors how the original film looked, but while there was an attempt, it can still look a little cheap on occasion with a few awkward expressions and some flat textures. The more festive environment, snowy exteriors and warm popping colors do capture the Christmas energy, but unlike other holidays special done with popular characters and worlds, this ironically feels pretty uninteresting and isn’t even drenched enough in Christmas elements to feel like it needed to be a holiday special, so it ironically doesn’t even succeed with its bare minimum for existing.

The songs were composed by Rachel Portman, an Oscar-winning film composer who has been responsible for many acclaimed scores for films like The Cider House Rules, Chocolat, Emma, The Joy Luck Club, and several others, and this would ironically mark the first time a woman would compose a Disney animated movie (strange given how female-centric the company is, but better late than never). With her composing the score as well as helping to work on the songs alongside lyricist, Don Black, it’s a shame that the music for this film isn’t really that good, at least from the song department. They aren’t terrible and are backed by good vocals (hearing both Paige O’Hara and Bernadette Peters singing together is like being serenaded by angels), but the numbers themselves feel pretty rushed in their melodies and lyrics, and even with only about four featured, they still feel underwritten and hastily constructed.

Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas can proudly proclaim it’s nowhere near the worse Disney sequel (or even the worst to feature this world and its characters) but given the track record of this phase for the studio, that really isn’t saying much, and no one is asking for this on their Christmas list. This movie was largely used to capitalize on a popular brand rather than for anything meaningful, and while it does deserve some credit for not entirely skimming by on it and putting in some effort to at least stay above water with some occasionally nice animation and a really good villain, but with poorly handled characters, an extremely unmemorable plot, and music that is only slightly passable, it’s unlikely this’ll break any curses anytime soon.

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