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.

TMDb rating7.7

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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.'

The Little Mermaid poster

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.

Aladdin poster

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.

Tangled poster

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.

The Shape of Water poster
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.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame poster

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.

Cinderella poster

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.

Anastasia poster

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.

Enchanted poster

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.

Howl's Moving Castle poster

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.

Shrek poster

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.

King Kong poster

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