“It’s not right for a woman to read! Soon she starts getting ideas, and … thinking.” Inspired by Sinéad’s hindsight-fluffed dissection of The Lion King the other day, I took it upon myself to dust off my (now digitalised) copy of Disney’s Beauty and The Beast to see if what was neon-catchy then can stand up to scrutiny now. And you know what? The grown-up me has found just as much to like about it! Hurrah! Beauty and The Beast was a grower, for me. As a tween, I preferred Aladdin’s derring-do and his bare-chested-but-non-threatening aesthetic moxie. Hot on his genie’s blue heels came The Lion King, which had more fart jokes than you could shake a warthog’s arse at, and then, of course, along came Toy Story, which turned all of our brains into fizzing Play Doh. But eventually it occurred to me that I liked Beauty and The … There’s more →