Beauty and the Beast (1991 film) servants' human forms. The Prince and Belle host a ball for the kingdom, where they dance happily. After the success of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" in 1937, Walt Disney sought out other stories to adapt into feature films, with "Beauty and the Beast" being among the stories he considered. Attempts to develop the "Beauty and the Beast" story into a film were made in the 1930s and 1950s, but were ultimately given up because it "proved to be a challenge" for the story team. Peter M. Nichols states Disney may later have been discouraged by Jean Cocteau having
Beauty and the Beast (Disney song) "TV Guide" compared "Beauty and the Beast" to "Shall We Dance?" from the musical "The King and I". R.L. Shaffer of IGN identified "Beauty and the Beast" as a "tear-jerking poetic ballad." "Film Genre 2000: New Critical Essays" author Wheeler W. Dixon believes that the song's lyrics are about the couple's "implicit promise of regeneration through love." 29 lines in length, all of which are exactly five syllables, "Beauty and the Beast" is a love song about a couple's transformation from friends into "something more". The film's theme song, its lyrics "capture the essence of the film" by describing the