YMMV / Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas

• Accidental Innuendo: Fife's "I'd do anything for a solo!" Made worse by his voice actor being Paul Reubens. Forte's response to this line is not helping. Just the way Tim Curry says it. "Yes... I know."
• Awesome Music:
  • Belle's song, "Stories". It's hard not to be inspired by her determination to help the Beast be a better person, especially as it ties back to the Romeo and Juliet scene from "Human Again". ("We will slay the dragons that still follow him around/And he'll smile, yes, he'll smile/As his dreams leave the ground...") It's also one of the best deliveries of the "Reading Is Cool" Aesop extant, and the animation is unique and memorable thanks to the Art Shift. There's a reason it was included in the opening titles overture and became the film's Leitmotif, even more than "As Long as There's Christmas".
  • "As Long as There's Christmas" itself is no slouch, either, sung by almost everyone in the cast as they decorate the castle. The reprise, led by Angelique, is also quite beautiful. The film also ends with a gorgeous 90’s-style cover of the song by Disney veteran Peabo Bryson and the late Roberta Flack.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The song "A Cut Above The Rest" comes right out of nowhere and stops as soon as The Beast enters. It also has a bizarrely happy tone considering they’re locked in a dungeon.
• Evil Is Cool: Forte is considered one of the better Disney sequel villains due to his design and being voiced by Tim Curry with his usual gusto.
• Fridge Brilliance: Why does Forte try to tear down the castle with his playing when he has his Villainous Breakdown? Because he's a pipe organ — he's quite literally pulling out all the stops!
• Fridge Horror: What state must Forte be in after everyone is turned human again? Did he stay a smashed up pipe organ or is he a bloody pile of assorted body parts?
• Genius Bonus:
  • During the woodcuts Art Shift for "Stories", the lines "I know a tiny place/Just a dot, too small to measure" are accompanied by Earth seen depicted in space with the rest of the solar system, and the sun is depicted as The Face of the Sun, just as described in heraldry on the page ("the sun in his splendor"). It also appears this way a bit earlier in the song. Not only does this fit the medieval/Renaissance period, which has generally been suggested (including by the directors) to be when the original film takes place, but the solar system model in question is heliocentric (and includes the ecliptic with the symbols of the zodiac). Which also fits the time period of the artwork (16th-17th century), indicates yet again how well-read Belle is—and, since Copernican theory had not yet been accepted nor Galileo vindicated after his trial, hints at how independent and strong-willed Belle is in going against Church teachings and some scientists of the day.
  • Also in "Stories", one of the illustrations which appears is of "The Ugly Duckling." Meanwhile, a portion of the melody and instrumentation for the song makes use of the famous triplet leitmotif from Jean Sibelius's 5th Symphony...which is known as the "swan call."
  • Pipe organs are known to contain pipes which play so low as to be subsonic, and thus affect the human nervous system. This, aside from the enchantress's magic, helps explain how Forte could have such influence over Belle and the Beast's emotions.
• Jerkass Woobie: All Forte wanted was to be useful to the Beast and becoming his best friend, a thing he probably never was when he was human.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Many fans of Disney's original Beauty and The Beast (considered by many, including those same fans, to be the height of the Disney Renaissance) who otherwise HATE this film for having many of the same problems as the rest of Disney's direct-to-video sequels (lower quality animation, excessive amounts of Narm even by Disney standards, new characters who were apparently "always there" being introduced with little to no attempt made to explain their absence from the original, etc.) still watch it at least once a year on Christmas just to hear Tim Curry playing the part of an evil pipe organ.
• Love to Hate: Even people who don't like this movie agree that Forte is a good villain.
• Memetic Mutation: "I'M BOLTED TO THE WALL!"^note A highly exploitable line from Forte. Popularized through Pyrocynical and even earlier, a series of videos where Forte repeatedly is given orders (namely, trying to save characters from other Disney movies) and failing because...well, guess.
  • Each of those would also end with the last reaction Forte giving being "I. THINK. NOT."
• Narm:
  • Forte's line when he starts destroying the castle. Though it can also fall into Narm Charm due to how unexpected and dark it is.
  Don't you see, Fife?! They can't fall in love if they're dead!
  • Some find the Flashback where we see how the Beast got cursed to be comical. Mostly because the Prince acts like a toddler.
• Retroactive Recognition: Haley Joel Osment plays Chip here, two years before his Star-Making Role in The Sixth Sense.
• Sequelitis: Well, midquelitis, anyway. While the film itself is probably one of the better so-called Disney "cheapquels", it's kind of hard to go from the pinnacle of the entire Disney Renaissance to a film that can be summed up as "Belle and the Beast defeat an evil gay organ and save Christmas."
• So Okay, It's Average: Many consider it to be one of the better Disney DTV sequels, and Tim Curry certainly does a good job as the villain, but that doesn’t stop it from being yet another standard Christmas movie.
• Sweetness Aversion: With lines like "Christmas that year was spent exchanging humble gifts, but the greatest gift that anyone received was the gift of hope."
• Visual Effects of Awesome: While it's nowhere near the level of the original by a long shot due to its direct-to-video budget, Enchanted Christmas manages to be a massive improvement over Return of Jafar and even King of Thieves, the latter of which only came out a year before this. Standout moments include the Art Shift in "Stories" and the flashback to the castle's enchantment, this is compounded by the fact that this was the first Disney DTV film to use digital ink-and-paint allowing for less rough-looking drawings.

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