On Friday nights, IndieWire After Dark takes a feature-length beat to honor fringe cinema in the streaming age.
First, the spoiler-free pitch for one editor’s midnight movie pick — something weird and wonderful from any age of film that deserves our memorializing.
Then, the spoiler-filled aftermath as experienced by the unwitting editor attacked by this week’s recommendation.
The Pitch: It’s Christmas at the Castle… and the Wood Axe is Jewish!
No one ever remembers the part of “Beauty and the Beast” where Belle nearly drowns because a Christmas tree falls into a lake, do they?
As a daughter of the ‘90s, Disney’s turn-of-the-century Princess Renaissance was my childhood. Bedsheets, pajamas, school supplies, toys, and anything else that furnished my little life was frequently themed to honor Jasmine, Ariel, Mulan, Pocahontas, or Belle: a squadron of girl-power role models that, all things considered, weren’t too shabby in retrospect.
Now, the second-wave Disney princess best described as “the one who can read” wasn’t my favorite (Snow White hive, assemble!) — but she was my older sister’s favorite. And as anyone who has ever had an older sister can attest, that meant that Belle and the Beast’s flag flew high over the Foreman family kingdom year-round. Enter “Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas.”
This 1997 straight-to-video expansion flick directed by Andy Knight was both a holiday and non-holiday watch for my sister and me. Our VHS copy, depicting Belle in a fur-lined gown just perfect for the kind of sledding you love as a kid in Colorado, was so frequently clamored for in our house that calling it an annual tradition would discount the hundreds of hours we put into it during the offseason. Underseen and gloriously strange, this was our rewindable Roman Empire.
The midquel (yes, midquel!) expands on Belle’s imprisonment at the Beast’s castle, imagining how the beautiful French villager might have softened her captor’s temper with the spirit of Christmas. With the help of Cogsworth, Lumiere, Mrs. Potts, and more characters from the original — all with the same voice actors, save for Haley Joel Osment who takes over as Chip — Belle embarks on the age-old tradition of warm-hearted women attempting to holly-jolly their ways into the hearts of assholes. If she can make the Beast see the magic of Christmas, then maybe they’ll all be one step closer to breaking the Enchantress’ spell.
It’s cliché to pick apart the abusive underpinnings of the centuries-old French fairytale and its 1991 Disney adaptation. But the canon contributed to Belle’s prison diary via “Enchanted Christmas” breathes enough disturbing details into the story to set your dinner plates spinning. A surprisingly good fit for the midnight movie crowd, the elements added in for this — the first of two expansions (“Belle’s Magical World” would come the following year) — completely reframe the events of the original. Not only do they put a fine point on just how long Belle was held at the castle against her will, but they raise serious questions about how the rest of the story shakes out.
Setting up a baffling love triangle with Lumiere and feather duster Fifi, Bernadette Peters steps in as Angelique: a jaded castle decorator turned into a tree-top ornament. And an even worse villain than Gaston or the Beast, Tim Curry brings the house down as Forte: an angry musician-turned-even angrier anthropomorphic pipe organ, who critically doesn’t want to go back to being human and scared the hell out of me as a kid. He’s aided in his dastardly quest to stop Belle’s Christmas celebration by Fife, a cowardly piccolo played by the late Paul Reubens. Hell, even Jeff Bennett (AKA “Johnny Bravo” himself) lends his voice to a Jewish wood axe that explicitly wishes audiences a “Happy Hanukkah!”
A deliriously whacky world-building exercise with some genuinely creepy moments, “Enchanted Christmas” is a hidden treasure that’s probably being mindlessly played for various princess-obsessed children this weekend via Disney+, but it’s better enjoyed by an older crowd who can properly question its bizarre curiosities. Sure, the House of Mouse is more mainstream than IndieWire After Dark typically goes. But there’s a one-of-a-kind weirdo wonder in realizing that, for countless kids living before the streaming age, this unapologetic Christmas cash grab was a Tale as Old as Time. —AF
The Aftermath: They Don’t Make ’Em Like This Anymore — But That Should Be the Goal
Walt Disney Animation Studios could have avoided a nine figure loss on its 2023 balance sheet if it had just listened to the wise words of The Beast: “Wishes are stupid.”
The entertainment giant’s most recent stab at the animated musical genre it perfected in the ’90s made the baffling decision to tell the origin story for the star that its other characters often make wishes on. The laughably uncreative premise was probably doomed to fail, but I found myself thinking about the psychedelic-tinged movie during “Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas.”
“Wish” was a desperate attempt to re-capture the know-it-when-you-see-it “Disney magic” that was once so synonymous with the $160 billion corporation. Despite releasing multiple impeccably drawn feature films across its Disney Animation and Pixar brands each year, the studio just can’t seem to find any concepts that don’t seem like hollow retreads of past glory — and its box office receipts increasingly agree.
Ironically, “Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas” has no such problem — despite the fact that it really should.
A needless brand extension if there ever was one, the special does little more than remind us how awesome the characters and vibes from “Beauty and the Beast” (the only Disney movie I truly love) are. Utilizing some timeline manipulation that would feel right at home in the “Saw” franchise, it takes place sometime after the beginning of the original film but well before the end of it. And yet its obviously contrived premise wasn’t enough to keep me from smiling.
But this is still IndieWire After Dark, so yes, there were some odd moments that merit discussing. As great as it was to see the likes of Cogsworth, Mrs. Potts, and Chip, the new anthropomorphic household objects they introduced left a bit to be desired. None of them were full on bad (with the possible exception of the organ Maestro Forte, who I feel is destined to be cancelled for some kind of inappropriate palace behavior at any given moment), but it’s easy to see why they were left on the sidelines during the original film. The smaller instruments like Fife were forgettable, and the axe had an understandably strange vibe (as any of us would if our entire existence involved being violently swung at wooden logs).
Hanging out with these characters was like listening to a new set of bonus tracks that your favorite artist released. The kind of songs that you enjoy because they sound so similar to songs you actually love, but you also understand why they stayed on the cutting room floor. And yet what was a forgettable B-side in 1997 would have been one of the best things Disney released in 2023. Watching this in 2023 while Disney digs between metaphorical couch cushions looking for leftover crumbs of childhood magic, “Enchanted Christmas” felt like a throwback to an era where it had so much of it that it could easily spare a handful on a cash grab Christmas special. At any rate, I’ll meet you back here on Christmas Eve of 2025 to discuss the live action “Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas” remake that will inevitably be streaming on Disney+. —CZ
Those brave enough to join in on the fun can stream “Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas” on Disney+. IndieWire After Dark publishes midnight movie recommendations at 11:59 p.m. ET every Friday. Read more of our deranged suggestions from the 2023 holiday season…
- ‘Santa and the Ice Cream’ Bunny Is a Hauntingly Odd Christmas Fairy Tale That Should Be Kept from Children at All Costs
- Ski Lift Survival Horror ‘Frozen’ (2010) Is Still the Best Cinematic Homonym in the Game
- ‘Christmas Comes to Pac-Land’ Is the Chomp-Filled ’80s Christmas Relic You Never Knew You Needed
- The Late Julian Sands Blows the Lid Off Hulu’s Holiday Horror Comedy ‘A Nasty Piece of Work’
- ‘The Yattering and Jack’ Warns Against Satanic Turkey Preparation This Thanksgiving Eve
