Even if you're a parent, I'm sure you don't need one of our typical "10 Things Parents Should Know" posts about Beauty and the Beast 3D, which opens Friday in theaters all over the United States and Canada. It's still essentially the same film it was two decades ago, when it was the first animated film ever nominated for a Best Picture Oscar, and the only one for the next 18 years. And this time it has a fun, short-film sequel to Tangled as a lead-in, which is just icing on the cake.

Does the 3-D add anything to the film? Not much: The ballroom scene, which made headlines in 1991 for being the first time a Disney animated feature had used computer animation, is more spectacular than before. The "Be Our Guest" sequence – which started out over the top – did pop a bit more than before.

Other than that, I honestly didn't notice the 3-D much, due, I think, to a combination of my general distaste for 3-D-converted movies and the fact that the folks at Disney held back from doing too much to tweak an already great film. (I'm also pretty sure they dialed up the brightness before converting, so the results aren't as dark as I'd feared they'd be.) The fact that I hadn't seen the original version in a movie theater since 1991, and it has so many great visual pieces it really benefits from theater viewing, also helped a lot.

Should you go see it? Absolutely! It's one of the best animated films Disney's ever made, so why would you let a little thing like 3-D keep you from seizing the opportunity to see it on the big screen again? If 3-D gives you headaches, then that may be a good reason to avoid it, but – and I can only speak from personal experience – that often happens to me, too, and I took a few ibuprofen before leaving for the theater and walked out of the movie without any pain.

Tangled Ever After, the short film (also in 3-D) that precedes the main attraction, is full of brilliantly funny slapstick as Pascal the chameleon and Maximus the horse chase down runaway wedding rings through the town while the ceremony gets closer and closer to the time when they'll be needed. (See below for a video clip from the short.)

Keep in mind, too, that Beauty and the Beast's Belle is easily the geekiest heroine of any Disney animated film. Heck, the movie opens with a song that's largely about how she doesn't fit in because she's always reading and using her imagination. She's obviously very intelligent, and she helps out her father with his inventions. And is there any geek who doesn't share Belle's awestruck reaction when the Beast shows (and gives) her the castle's library?

I'm on record as being generally against the use of 3-D in movies, and I certainly don't think it's necessary in Beauty and the Beast 3D, or even terribly useful. But it doesn't detract to any real degree from this all-time classic animated movie, so I can't really object to it too much in this case. I'm of two minds about the next 3-D-converted film Disney is set to release: Finding Nemo, coming in September. I know the conversion will be seamless, because the movie was computer-rendered to begin with, but I'm afraid it might distract from the story. Time will tell, I guess.