Film
Beauty and the Beast
Disney's 1991 fairy tale, told with real wit and real feeling: a bookish heroine, a cursed household of talking teapots and candlesticks, and one of the best film scores ever written for children. It's funny, it's frightening in short bursts, and the ballroom waltz still lands like a small miracle. For anyone who wants a musical that actually earns its tears.
If you liked this
The Little Mermaid1989
The film that proved Disney could do this again, from the same songwriting team, with the same appetite for a heroine who wants more than her world offers her.
But Ariel's arc is thinner and the ending compromises more than Belle's ever does.'

Aladdin1992
Faster, funnier, and stranger, with Robin Williams turning the Genie into pure chaotic joy while the romance underneath stays sincere and a little wistful.
But The comedy dates it in ways Beauty and the Beast's more classical style avoids.

Tangled2010
A spiritual descendant: another headstrong girl locked away from the world, another story about who gets to decide what's monstrous, told with real visual imagination and a sneaky, lovely score.
But It's brighter and jokier throughout, with none of the original's gothic shadows.

The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
The Shape of Water2017
Same premise stripped of its fairy-tale safety net: what if the beast stayed a beast, and the love story had to reckon with that honestly instead of through a curse-breaking kiss?
Guillermo del Toro's Cold War fable about a mute cleaning woman who falls for an amphibious creature in a government lab — tender, strange, and unexpectedly explicit about what falling for a monster actually involves.
But It's R-rated, sexually frank, and unmistakably a film for adults, not a family evening.

More like this (7)
The Hunchback of Notre Dame1996
Disney's darkest, most operatic musical, wrestling with the same question of who counts as a monster and who doesn't, but with genuine menace and a villain who means it.
But It's heavier and sadder than anything the studio attempted before or since; not a cozy watch.

Cinderella2015
A lush, sincere live-action fairy tale from Kenneth Branagh that trusts the old story completely, with Cate Blanchett having enormous fun as the stepmother.
But No songs, and it plays the material completely straight where Beauty and the Beast leans into comedy.

Anastasia1997
Not Disney, but close kin: sweeping romance, a wonderful score, and a heroine with genuine steel in her who isn't waiting around to be rescued.
But The animation is a step below Disney's peak-era polish, and the history it borrows is fairly loose.

Enchanted2007
A loving, very funny reply to the whole genre, dropping a cartoon princess into real-world New York and asking what happens to the fairy tale when it has to survive contact with actual life.
But It's a comedy first, so if you want another sincere romance, this pokes fun at the very thing you loved.

Howl's Moving Castle2004
Studio Ghibli's own beauty-and-beast story, gentler and stranger, with a walking castle and a curse that shifts rather than simply lifts, and a soft, aching visual beauty throughout.
But The plot wanders and resists tidy resolution in a way Western fairy tales rarely allow themselves.

Shrek2001
The gleeful mirror image: an ogre who has no interest in being redeemed by love, and a princess who turns out not to need saving either. Funny on purpose, sharp under the jokes.
But It actively mocks the sincerity that makes the original work, which some nights you just don't want.

King Kong1933
It's the tragic version of the exact same shape: enormous, misunderstood creature, beauty he can't have, a world that destroys him rather than transforms him.
The granddaddy monster movie, and secretly a beauty-and-the-beast story with the sweetness stripped out — a captured creature, a woman he's fixated on, and a rooftop finale that refuses him any happy ending.
But Creaky effects and pacing by today's standards, and it offers none of the warmth or resolution you're used to.

People
Cast
Paige O'HaraBelle (voice)
Robby BensonBeast (voice)
Richard WhiteGaston (voice)
Jerry OrbachLumiere (voice)
David Ogden StiersCogsworth (voice)
Angela LansburyMrs. Potts (voice)
Rex EverhartMaurice (voice)
Jesse CortiLefou (voice)
Bradley PierceChip (voice)
Hal SmithPhilippe (voice)
Jo Anne WorleyWardrobe (voice)
Mary Kay BergmanBimbette (voice)
Directing
- Gary TrousdaleDirector
- Kirk WiseDirector
- Bill PerkinsLayout
- Dan St. PierreLayout
- Fred CraigLayout
- Larry LekerLayout
- Lorenzo E. MartinezLayout
- Rasoul AzadaniLayout
- Rick MooreLayout
- Tanya T. WilsonLayout
- Thom EnriquezLayout
- Tom ShannonLayout
Writing
- Jeanne-Marie Leprince de BeaumontNovel
- Linda WoolvertonScreenplay
- Brenda ChapmanStory
- Brian PimentalStory
- Bruce WoodsideStory
- Burny MattinsonStory
- Chris SandersStory
- Joe RanftStory
- Kelly AsburyStory
- Kevin HarkeyStory
- Robert LenceStory
- Roger AllersStory
- Tom ElleryStory
Production
- Brett HaydenAssistant Production Manager
- Bruce Grant WilliamsAssistant Production Manager
- Deborah TobiasAssistant Production Manager
- Leslie HoughAssistant Production Manager
- Patricia HicksAssistant Production Manager
- Paul SteeleAssistant Production Manager
- Suzie Vissitzky TooleyAssistant Production Manager
- Theresa BentzAssistant Production Manager
- Sarah McArthurAssociate Producer
- Albert TavaresCasting
- Matthew MessingerCasting Associate
- Howard AshmanExecutive Producer
- Don HahnProducer
- Sarah McArthurProducer
- Carole ConstantineauProduction Accountant
- Darrell L. BrownProduction Accountant
- Kyle PattersonProduction Accountant
- Robin J. FlynnProduction Accountant
- Charlie DesrochersProduction Coordinator
- Kevin WadeProduction Coordinator
- Baker BloodworthProduction Manager
- Tim O'DonnellProduction Manager
- Dorothy McKimProduction Supervisor
Recommended by
The Shape of Water, Aladdin, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, The Little Mermaid, The Lion King, 365 Days, Anastasia, Pinocchio, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Frozen, Beauty and the Beast