Beauty and the Beast Sing-Along debuts at France pavilion in Epcot

Bonjour! Bonjour! Bonjour! Bonjour! Bonjour!

The newest addition to the France pavilion at Epcot in Disney World debuted this morning to an audience that was encouraged to sing strong and sing-along.

The Beauty and the Beast Sing-Along is a 15-minute retelling of the animated tale with a bit of a twist.

Angela Lansbury (she’s 94 years young!)  reprises her role as Mrs. Potts to narrate the real behind-the-scenes story of how Belle and the Beast found each other. It seems the real hero of the story, who worked in the background to orchestrate the entire romance, is LeFou.

The reason – he had enough of Gaston. You can understand LeFou’s reasoning. The sidekick was repeatedly dismissed, rejected and publicly humiliated by the man who eats “five dozen eggs. So I’m roughly the size of a barge!”

The retelling, from LeFou’s point of view, is cute and the film is serviceable with songs from the movie including “Belle,” “Gaston,” “Be Our Guest” “Something There” and “Beauty and the Beast.”

LeFou plays a great comic relief throughout the story, which when you think about it is a bit grim.

If you have never seen “For the First Time in Forever: A Frozen Sing-Along Celebration” at Disney’s Hollywood Studios you will enjoy The Beauty and the Beast Sing-Along and find it charming.

If you are a major fan of “For the First Time in Forever: A Frozen Sing-Along Celebration” you will be disappointed.

Beauty and the Beast has no live cast encouraging you to sing. Mrs. Potts encourages you from the movie to sing loud before most songs. And, it feels like you are getting the cut down version of the songs. Any in some cases you are, such as in the opening song, “Belle.”

There are practical reasons for the difference. The Frozen sing-along theater can accommodate hundreds of people and is designed as a stage theater. Meanwhile, the  Palais du Cinema in France can accommodate a fraction of that and is a movie theater by design.

This is the reason the Frozen show is 30 minutes in length and The Beauty and the Beast show is 15 minutes. You need to have more shows to allow more people to see it. This is why you might feel the story is rushed.

However, if you want to sing like no one is watching or see a new twist on a tale as old as time, this will be for you.