Beauty and the Beast was one of the only movies I managed to squeeze in a rewatch of in the 2-3 days I had after learning about the countdown.
I ultimately placed it at #5, though I probably would have rated it lower if I had more time.
Having said that, I think
Beauty and the Beast is kind of underrated in the big picture of Disney movies. Our "Princess" Belle, unlike many others, is just a content main character without any status or privilege,
a nerd even, she's just loves books, has a good relationship with her dad, and that's pretty much the beginning and end of any conflict up until Gaston inserts himself into things and her dad fumbles his way into Beast's Castle.
Beast's rationale for keeping Belle imprisoned is pretty contrived from the outset, but her natural fearlessness combined with Beast actually being somewhat of a pushover helps redeem his character, which is ultimately the entire point of the story. All of the songs, I would argue, other than "Be Our Guest" and "Human Again" are all solid, mainly because those two just fixate so heavily on the sidecast of furniture characters which exist almost entirely for comedy relief.
Basically, the worst part of any Disney movie is the forced insertion of quirky comedy relief characters.
Much as they've tried to repeatedly recreate the stereotypically hateable chauvinist character, Gaston really just is the best they've ever made. He's played as straight as he possibly can be without judgment and he's just such a gloriously selfish *******. Disney would never be able to do this character justice nowadays, and I'm confident that I don't have to see the Live-Action/CG remake to make that claim.
Overall, it's a solid movie.
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