[Movie Monday] Beauty and the Beast

Movie: Beauty and the Beast

Genre: Animation

It’s Monday, and for next several weeks to next several months, Mondays will be Movie Monday!

Movie Monday will be the Monday to talk about movies, and today’s Movie Monday spotlight goes to the old time classic – Beauty and the Beast!

“A tale as old as time. True as it can be. Barely even friends, then somebody bends – Unexpectedly. Just a little change – Small to say the least. Both a little scared, neither one prepared – Beauty and the Beast.”

Beauty and the Beast is a story that tells a story of a beauty by the name of Belle falling in love with a beastly prince, who has literally been turned into a beast under a spell and has never been given a name. And when the story starts, it starts with a prologue of how the Beast became the beast he is, which is a story of how a beautiful witch appeared before him at the door of his castle as an ugly old woman selling the rose, only to be turned away because the prince had judged her by her appearance, which leads into refusing to buy even a single rose from her. The witch, angered at the fact he only looks at outer appearance, reveals her true look to the prince, which he then proceeds to begging the witch to forgive him. Wanting to teach him a lesson, the witch refuses to listen to the begging and puts him and all his workers under a spell – The prince into the beast that he is on the inside and the workers into various inanimate objects used around the house that most closely represents them based on the type of work that they do if not for the item their name most closely relates to them. And for the spell to break and for everyone in the castle to return to their normal selves, the prince, the Beast, must learn to love and they must be loved in return before the magical rose given to him by the witch completely dies with its last petal of flower dies. Or for eternity they will be stuck in the form that they are in.

When the prologue is over, it goes onto the story of opening up with introduction of Belle in terms of how beautiful yet odd she is compared to everyone else in the village, and it is obvious exactly how beautiful she is by the way even all the men are infatuated with her. It’s even to the point where Gaston, the one man that all the women except Belle are in love with and who all the men wants to be like, announces that he will make Belle his wife. Of course, for Belle, she doesn’t see Gaston just for his looks but how cynical of a man he is, and it’s always having to proceed to never judging a book just by its cover that makes her stand out from the rest. For Belle, it should be made obvious from the start that she isn’t exactly like other girls that is always dependent on men.

What’s more to the story is that Belle’s father has to go to a science convention, only to end up at the Beast’s castle at the dark of nights and be left behind by his horse due to being spooked. And when the horse returns, Belle asks the horse to take her to where her father was left behind. Of course, it’s all with unknowing what has happened to her father, which is that he was being given the hospitality by the workers in their inanimate object forms until the Beast throws him into one of the cells in a tower. Upon arrival, Belle sacrifices herself for her father so that her father may live as a free man while she stays a prisoner in his place. It’s also then where she learns that just because one is a beast on the outside, it may not necessarily mean that they are truly a beast on the inside.

When you meet someone, do you judge them just by how they look?

Or do you bring yourself to look at them for who they are before anything else?

Of course, judging others by how they look is off the bat is what’s easier for them. But as Belle teaches a special lesson through this movie, judging a book by its cover isn’t always the best way to go since how a book cover looks, or how a person looks on the outside in the case of Beauty and the Beast, it’s not always the best way to go. It’s always better to try and get to know the person for who they are rather than just assuming no matter how hard that may be.