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An In-Depth Analysis Of 'Beauty And The Beast'

The live action Beauty and The Beast opened last week and has already made over $392 million worldwide. Not bad for a story about a woman who falls in love with a giant ram-cat. For the past year and a half, Beauty and The Beast has been fucking everywhere. Like, you can barely browse Twitter on the toilet these days without running into a video of Emma Watson talking about how kidnapping is actually feminist now or a Medium post about what Disney’s “exclusively gay moment” could mean for trans candelabras. All this talk about Emma Watson’s tits and gay Lefou got us thinking, when was the last time we checked in with the OG 1991 animated version? Like, no offense to Emma and co but this new one is basically a shot-for-shot remake but with bad autotune and one scene where two men men make eye contact. Also Belle is like, an inventor or some shit. Very progressive.

And let’s face it, while Emma Watson’s transformation from ugly duckling who loves books to hot person who loves books is fascinating, she’ll never hold a candle (or a tune – my dad) to the animated Belle whose face was stamped on our backpacks, lunchboxes, and birthday decorations for basically all of elementary school.

So how does OG BATB hold up now that we can like, read and count and shit? Let’s investigate:

We open on a flashback. The narrator, who we never hear from again, starts going in on The Beast. He calls him “spoiled, selfish, and unkind,” and tells us all about how he once didn’t let a random homeless lady into his house. Turns out the homeless lady was really a beautiful enchantress who is totally pissed The Not-Yet-Beast didn’t let her into his house. She turns him into a beast, and in a dick move, she includes all his servants and shit in the curse as well. Then she hands him a magic mirror and a rose, tells him he’d better find love before his 21st birthday, and GTFOs.

Sidebar: If The Beast is only 20 at the end, and Lumiere says they’ve been in the castle for eleven years, then does that mean The Beast is like 10 years old when this happened? Eternal life as a monster seems like kind of a harsh punishment for a kid who didn’t want to talk to strangers. Isn’t this what we tell 10-year-olds to do? It’s stranger danger, not stranger danger unless you think the stranger is secretly an enchantress. Come on, Disney.

Cut to Belle’s shitty college town. Belle kicks off the movie with a musical number where she walks around talking shit on everyone in her immediate area. “The baker always has the same bread,” “This town is poor and provincial,” “Marie’s baguettes are tacky AF,” that kind of thing.

But as much shit as Belle talks about the town, the town talks equal amounts of shit about her. Mainly because she likes to read, which is strange for women in this town, who spend most of their time wandering around buying food and screaming “I NEED SIX EGGS” at anyone who will listen.

Cue Gaston shooting a goose out of the sky. Gaston tells LeFou (who is gay, I guess) that he’s going to marry Belle because she’s the hottest person in town and despite the presence of three identical boob sisters. Gaston never addresses why he does not find the Tit Triplets as acceptable wives. They’re probably from a lower tier sorority or something like that.

Belle and Gaston have a conversation that is literally cringeworthy. Like, if it was a Tinder message, it would have gone like this:

GASTON: Hey girl what’s up?
BELLE: Nothing. Just reading.
GASTON: Howabout you read this DICK tho?
BELLE: I’m not interested.
GASTON: Bitch ur fat anyway.

Then LeFou makes shit worse by calling Belle’s dad crazy, probably as some kind of a distraction from his own sexuality.

Now we meet Belle’s dad, who actually does seem kind of crazy. He’s building some kind of wooden steam car that honestly looks like a pile of shit. He announces that he’ll be dragging his his monstrous invention to a “convention” and then promptly gets himself, and his horse Felipe, lost in the damn woods because literally all the men in Belle’s life are fully incompetent.

Crazy-Ass Maurice: This can’t be right! Where have you taken us Felipe?
Felipe: Um I’m a fucking horse dude it’s not my job to know the directions.

Felipe then says “fuck this I’m not paid enough for this” and bolts, leaving Belle’s dad to be eaten by wolves. To avoid being eaten, Maurice breaks into The Beast’s castle and raises absolutely 0 red flags when all the appliances start talking to him and settling him into a nice seat by the fire. Because, again, men are fully incompetent. The Beast flips the fuck out when he sees Belle’s dad getting all pampered and shit.

Beast: You’re here to look at the hideous Beast!!!
Crazy-Ass Maurice: Chill dude I didn’t even know you were here.
Beast: See you in the dungeon bitch byeeeeeeeee!!!

Cut back to Belle, who is so disgusted by the fact that Gaston just planned a literal wedding without her that she makes like any woman who just got hit on by any gross guy at the club and runs the fuck into the woods, where she finds Felipe.

Belle: Felipe? Where is my dad? He’s too crazy to be out alone!
Felipe: Your dad was actually a huge dick to me so I bounced.

Belle arrives at The Beast’s castle, where Cogsworth is going off on Lumiere for being nice to Belle’s dad in the first place. All the servant appliances realize that Belle is there, and commence flipping the fuck out.

Lumiere: Shes the one! The girl to break the spell!
Cogsworth: Well let’s hold up just one second we literally know nothing about this person.

Belle finds her dad in The Beast’s dungeon, where The Beast promptly shows up. Belle is not at all bothered by The Beast’s presence, and is like “Have you seen the other dudes I deal with on a daily basis? This is nothing. Take me instead.”

The Beast, realizing that learning to love will probably be much easier with Belle than her dad, decides that’s a pretty good option, as long as she promises to stay forever (because that might be how long it takes for an attractive human woman to fall in love with an enormous horned cat).

And so Belle and The Beast’s romance begins. Their Tinder convo would go something like…

The Beast: Hey girl, you wanna get dinner later?
Belle: Sorry. Not interested. You kidnapped my dad.
The Beast:  YOU WILL JOIN ME FOR DINNER THAT’S NOT A REQUEST!!!!!!!

Cut back to Gaston, who is literally furious about Belle refusing his proposal and about two seconds away from starting a men’s rights group on Reddit.

LeFou then sings a whole song about how hot Gaston is, referencing his thick “neck”  and the cleft in his chin and how “not a bit of him’s scraggly or scrawny” and how “nobody spits like Gaston” and a bunch of other things that we all now know were some pretty clear signs that LeFou wanted to be more than just Gaston’s gap-toothed sidekick.

The pride parade gets broken up by Crazy-Ass Maurice who tells everyone at the bar that The Beast has Belle. Gaston begins to form a plan, and LeFou goes home to do some deep Googling and consider moving to a less provincial, more liberal town where nobody knows him.

Cut back to Belle doing the very Disney thing of crying dramatically on the bed. Mrs. Potts and the wardrobe show up and Belle is like “omg thank god some fucking women. Can one of you tell me wtf is going on?”

Belle ghosts The Beast for dinner, sending him into a full fuckboy rage spiral.

The Beast: Dinner is ready!
Belle: I already told you I’m not interested.
The Beast: HAHAHA YOU THOUGHT I WAS INTERESTED IN YOU? LOL NO WAY WHAT GAVE YOU THAT IDEA UR UGLY ANYWAY!! BLOCKED!!!

Belle waits a bit, and then sneaks out for some late night cold pizza and then “Be Our Guest” happens, and if every second of “Be Our Guest” isn’t already burned into your memory for all time then maybe go to the doctor because you might be dealing with a Still Alice type situation.

Moving on…

Belle is feeling better after eating and decides its time to break into The Beast’s bedroom and see what his fucking deal is.

The Beast: What are you doing in here? GET OUT! GO!
Belle: I mean, okay sure, I was only staying here because you kidnapped me anyway.

Felipe, who has apparently just been chilling at the castle the whole time, does what Felipe always does and rides their asses into a big old swarm of wolves. The Beast saves Belle from the wolves, but he still brings her back to his castle where she’s a literal captive so how “saved” is she really?

Cut to shady-ass Gaston and closeted LeFou talking to the owner of the insane asylum, who appears to be an actual corpse. We find out that Gaston’s big plan is to get Maurice thrown into the asylum unless she agrees to marry him. Gaston appears to not have noticed that Belle is like, not in town right now because she’s been kidnapped. He leaves LeFou to watch the house for Belle and contemplate whether or not the life he’s living now is really serving who he is inside.

Cut back to The Beast’s castle, where he and Belle are friends now. The Beast shows her his big-ass library, and Belle gets horny as hell. The Beast’s bullshit is working. They sing a song about it. The song includes a line “when we touched she didn’t shudder at my paw,” which is fucking horrible. 

Things are going well, which is good because it’s almost the beast’s 21st birthday and he’s definitely not getting into any of the good bars in his current state. Like, homeboy looks nothing like his ID.

The servants now plan a romantic evening for the two of them, where they’ll be able to literally dance like nobody (except your enchanted servants) is watching. Belle appears in her signature yellow dress and a thousand years of halloween costumes are born. Everybody goes to bed happy in the certainty that the woman they’ve kidnapped is going to fuck their non-human master.

But of course, The Beast has caught feelings by now, and any time someone catches feelings is right about the time they fucking blow it. The Beast shows Belle her father and lo and behold, he’s right in the middle of a cough. This is enough for The Beast to release her. Belle GTFOs immediately, fully ruining The Beast’s 21st birthday plans.

Cogsworth: Where is Belle?
The Beast: I let her go. I love her.
Cogsworth: You selfish fuck this isn’t just about you!! What about all of us?!? Chip is a CHILD for gods sake!!!

Belle shows up at her father’s house and LeFou wakes up from daydreaming about a weekend on Fire Island to alert Gaston. The Insane Asylum man arrives pretty fast for an era in which there were no cellphones and Belle has to show them The Beast is real in order to save her dad from going to rehab.

Belle: My father isn’t crazy! Look! I can show you The Beast right here in this magic mirror!
Gaston: Wait, The Beast is real? We should definitely kill him!
Belle: Oh fuck…

The battle begins, and somehow a group of humans with guns are totally unable to beat an army of kitchen appliances with tomatoes. Lefou threatens to melt Lumiere, probably because he is jealous of Lumiere’s free wheeling and sexually liberated lifestyle, but ultimately there are no casualties.

Belle and motherfucking Felipe show up just in time to see Gaston and The Beast fighting in the rain on the roof. Gaston keeps screaming about how he’s going to kill The Beast and make Belle his wife, but then the beast comes back hard like “dude I am a mythical creature and you’re just a regular human, plus even if you kill me Belle will still say no to marrying you soooo….”

The Beast is about to kill Gaston, but then he sees Belle’s face and lets him go, which is a pretty bad move because Gaston straight-up stabs him and falls of the roof like a minute later.

Now Gaston is gone and The Beast is dying. Belle is finally rid of all these corny-ass dudes who have been bothering her. Unfortunately for feminism, Belle has actually caught feelings for her captor, and love is powerful enough to turn him hot again. Just in time for half-off shots.

Everyone is restored to their former hottness, and we know Belle is def really in love with The Beast because she doesn’t even leave him when she finds out he’s a ginger.

The movie ends with Chip, the only one of these people who will actually get to live a full life as a human, talking to his mom.

Chip: Will they live happily ever after mama?
Mrs. Potts: Of course they will, baby. This is fucking Disney. 

 
Alise Morales
Alise Morales
Alise Morales is a comedy writer and performer. She is the writer of the Betches Sup Newsletter and co-host of the Betches Sup Podcast.