Published on Dec 12, 1998
I think I may be going to Hell for what I’m about to say: I’ve
found a Christmas album that really isn’t good.
After the remarkable success with the original
Beauty And The Beast, the fine folks at Disney decided to
release a Christmas movie reprising the tale, releasing it direct
to video. Surprise! This is one of the times I actually watched the
video to get a feel of the soundtrack… and, well, the story left
a lot to be desired. Unfortunately, the accompanying soundtrack to
Beauty And The Beast – The Enchanted Christmas is not much
better.
Now, I do admire the fact that the original vocal cast is back
to reprise their original roles — and the addition of Bernadette
Peters is a wise move. While I have never been one who has been
into Broadway-style music, I’ve always admired her vocal talents,
and she fits in quite well to the story. (The singing talents of
people like David Ogden Stiers and Jerry Orbach are quite good —
though those silly accents tend to get in the way at times.)
Problem number one is that a lot of the music from the actual
video — which constitutes only about half of this disc — isn’t
Christmas music… not by a long shot. I’d be hard pressed to
explain how “Don’t Fall In Love” from Tim Curry (as the voice of
Forte) qualifies as a Christmas song; ditto goes for “Stories” from
Paige O’Hara (as the voice of Belle).
Of the actual Christmas music here, there are three – count
them,
three — different takes on “As Long As There’s Christmas,”
and none of them are that good. Even the end title version, sung by
Peabo Bryson and Roberta Flack, doesn’t set the speakers on fire
like I would expect it to; that’s usually the position in the movie
where the potential radio single is placed.
Problem number two comes in when the traditional carols are sung
by O’Hara. The renditions she does sound like rote readings of the
hymns, and are pretty lifeless. Additionally, all the Christmas
songs are lumped together; had they been spaced out between the
songs from the film, they might have been more tolerable. Likewise,
had other members of the cast joined in on these songs, it would
have broken up the monotony of O’Hara’s normally beautiful
voice.
That leaves us with the orchestral numbers from the film —
problem number three, in this case. Oh, it’s not that they’re bad;
far from it. In fact, the problem is that they’re too short; they
often sound like the songs got spliced in the middle, leaving the
songs ending
before the climax.
What’s really sad about
Beauty And The Beast – The Enchanted Christmas is that it
could have been a great Christmas album, had it not been thrown
together — which is how this slipshod collection sounds. Instead
of being a great album, it ends up being ho-ho-hum. Avoid this
one.