Beauty and the Beast: Belle's Magical World

The first Beauty and the Beast film is for me one of the best Disney films ever and while the second(the enchanted Christmas)was perhaps not as strong it still maintained all the warmth and humour of the first instalment.

This film again has all of these traits but while The enchanted Christmas would not have looked out of place as a cinema release Belles' magical world does looks and feels like the straight to video film that it is.

The short stories feel like chapters from a fairy story and the links in between are sweet with some classic Disney songs included. Interestingly for a third sequel most of the original cast return and this I think is what raises this film above other straight to video films in terms of quality.

Overall this is a worthy part of the classic Disney series.

Yeah... not great, that!

I'm not gonna lie, 'Belle's Magical World' is rather painful to watch. It's an anthology film, which is a negative straight off the bat. They cobble together three stories to fill 92 minutes, all of which should be left to being 7-10 minute short stories.

Much of the original cast pleasantly remain, with the exception of Angela Lansbury who ran for the mountains I assume - don't blame her! The voices all do fine jobs to be fair. It's the writing which is severely lacking here, with all three premises being entirely predictable and hard to watch.

The only thing this third 'Beauty and the Beast' production achieves is that it makes the Beast even more unlikeable, who knew that was possible? At this point, I shudder to think how the third follow-up, 'Belle's Tales of Friendship', is - though it isn't available to watch on Disney+, which is probably a blessing on my part.

The core target audience may have an OK time, but Disney really should've tried harder with these sequels/prequels.

You know what, I think I can understand why the series has never happened. Beauty and the Beast: Belle's Magical World is one of the worst Disney sequels alongside The Haunchback of Notre Dame II. As it was originally intended to be a TV series, all the episodes are piled up into something a lot more questionable as a movie. And as a result, everything about this is unpleasant. The segments have little to no connection to even count this as a movie, the morals are hammered down, the occurring characters are derailed, the new characters are obnoxious, and the animation is just dated television quality. I would've forgiven this if all these "episodes" were served as the cancelled series in one of the bonus features on a DVD special edition. But looking at this movie as a whole, it's a complete embarrassment. If you love the original film, then please. Stay away from this movie. For a movie that has one of the morals about apologizing, that's what this movie should do for ruining the original film. I don't think this will even work as a TV series.

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.

Having just rewatched the original film, this straight to video sequel (of sorts) is a jarring plummet in quality. Despite a largely returning voice cast, the animation is terrible, and the stories are worse.

Setting itself as a midquel, the film consists of three stories that take place during the time that Belle (Paige O'Hara) is becoming friends with the Beast (Robby Benson) but before Gaston's assault on the castle. In the first, Belle and the Beast fall out, and an attempt by the staff to reconcile them only makes it worse. In the second, on their anniversary, Fifi (Kimmy Robertson) comes to believe that Lumiere (Jerry Orbach) has eyes for Belle, rather than her. Finally, an injured bird teaches the Beast about forgiveness and letting go of the things he loves.

There is apparently a fourth story on certain DVD releases, but the Disney plus version only has these three that made up the phenomenally successful VHS release in the aftermath of the beloved originals success. As became a frequent feature of these sequels, it's actually three episodes of a failed spin-off show crudely pasted together and passed off as a film. They didn't even have the grace to animate some new wraparound bits this time.

Despite the return of Paige O'Hara and Robby Benson, and Jerry Orbach and David Ogden Stiers Belle's Magical World is up there (... down there?) as one of the worst, cheapest looking and most boring garbage fires that I've seen on this alphabetical run through Disney Plus. The stories are nonsensical, and the characters feel inconsistent with the ones we met in the actual film.

It's sad that the success of this video encourages Disney into a decade long cycle of cheap, lazy sequels rather than either maintaining the sanctity of their classics, or producing proper returns to their magical worlds.