Tangled (2010)

Rating: [PG]

Director: Byron Howard

Producer: John Lasseter

Writer: Dan Fogelman

Distributor: Walt Disney Pictures

"Look at the detail on the water!" "Oh my gosh, the hair looks so realistic!" "The textures are breathtaking!" "Her eyes actually look irritated when she cries!" "All the movements are so smooth and realistic!" "Think Dreamworks knows how hopeless it is to fight back at this point?"

Disney likes to show off. Welcome to "Rapun--" I mean... "Tangled".

Set in the renaissance age, "Tangled" is a re-hashed version of the well known fairy-tale "Rapunzel", heavily based off the Brothers Grimm adaptation. Within a nameless land there rests a nameless kingdom that is run by, as expected, a nameless king and queen who are about to receive their first born child. The queen becomes dangerously ill during her pregnancy though and so the king has every man at his disposal search for the legendary golden flower whose powers are said to heal all illness and wounds. Little known to the king and queen, the flower had been discovered some time ago by a wicked old hag named Gothel (Donna Murphy), who has kept the flower hidden on the outskirts of the kingdom's forest since she discovered it. One evening Gothel carelessly leaves the flower unprotected and the royal guards happen to come upon its location, quickly unearthing it and hurrying back to the castle. A potion is made for the queen, given to her and the illness disappears, leaving the queen to give birth to a beautiful baby girl with golden hair; Rapunzel (Mandy Moore).

Gothel then proceeds to to kidnap the child because plot development requires that she know about the golden flower's powers transferring to a fetus. Which hit me as a little bit more than odd considering the audience is told its required to sing to the golden flower in order for its magical properties to be unleashed and whenever you wanted to summon its powers you had to sing to it again. Yet the queen was able to have the flower dropped into a bowl of water and ingested, somehow having the same affect. Then it happens to go through her blood stream and into her unborn child who grows up to have magical hair that has to be activated by....singing. My wife explained to me that Gothel was using the flower specifically to keep herself young over the course of hundreds of years and that digesting the flower could have a different affect. That would sit well with me except for the flower's abilities being activated via digestion. Maybe the king sang to her pregnant belly after she ate it, I don't know. This wasn't originally part of the Rapunzel stories to begin with and overall its an interesting exposition but feels...silly.

Anyway, the king and queen spend several years searching for their missing child but have no luck. After the search is abandoned the kingdom makes a ritual out of releasing thousands of lanterns into the sky on Rapunzel's birthday in hopes that it will guide her home. Though why they would give up and throw lanterns into the air is beyond me. Could have done both but okay. Flash forward in time and we're introduced to seventeen, going on eighteen, Rapunzel who is becoming sick of living in her hidden tower and wishes to be taken to the source of the "floating stars" that appear annually on her birthday because she feels as though they are connected to her. Gothel, being the cliche'd surrogate mother that she is, refuses and exclaims that she will be locked in the tower forever. A little bit before this though we are introduced to the walking cliche' known as Flynn Ryder (Zachary Levi). He's just gotten finished stealing a plot device tiara from the palace and now has several handfuls of guards on his tail. This leads him to discovering Rapunzel's tower and how this was possible for a lone thief and not several years of searching by trained palace guards and possibly the entire kingdom......WHO KNOWS!

It's at this point that Rapunzel confronts Flynn with a skillet, locks him in a closet whilst he's unconscious, gets Gothel to leave for three days and proceeds to blackmail Flynn into taking her to see the floating lights. I won't divulge any further because its spoilers and I've also reached my "that was in the trailers" limit. Rapunzel's character is very well played and I was surprised at how well Moore did at projecting the innocence and playful curiosity onto the screen. She's got spunk but also has restraint considering her lack of contact with the outside world. I really liked that Disney was able to make a character who actually had multiple dimensions to their personality. She was not only naturally terrified of a world she'd never been into but also very zealous in achieving her goal. A very lovable character who's easy to relate to and who actually feels like a person that changes with their surroundings.

Beyond that we have a cast of cardboard cutouts. You've got one dimensions all over the map, from: badass-always-cunning-you'll-hate-me-now-but-love-me-later-butt-of-the-jokes-expert-thief Flynn to evil-pretends-to-be-nice-has-goals-of-her-own-and-they-are-so-dastardly-straight-out-of-Cinderella Gothel to a horse and a chameleon who both serve no purpose in the film other than to make silly faces and draw the attention of the camera whenever possible in order to put ease onto the abundance of lull moments in the film. That was the most disappointing aspect of the characters, actually. Typically I like silly sidekicks in Disney films but these two were abundantly worthless. They literally served no purpose except for cheap laughs. Heck, the chameleon is literally only given acknowledgment of his existence when needed as a inaudible laugh track. The film would have been a lot less cringe worthy if the sidekicks weren't present this time around.

Flynn was the other big disappointment. He was a one liner and it never let up. Even by the end of the film where the creators pulled the very over used "you're going to love me now because I learned so much off camera" stunt, he wasn't enjoyable. Not because he's made out to be a selfish womanizer at first and not because his new and improved self comes off as extremely lazy but because he was just.so.boring. Everything that came out of his mouth was a slapstick attempt at humor that grew to be very irritating. He's like a more mellowed out, human version of Mushu who has a persistent ego trip. Very hollow development all around that left me feeling like I didn't care about anything that happened to most of the characters.

The film is a musical, for those that didn't know. The ad campaigns definitely strayed away from giving this away to audiences. Which seems odd to me because the songs were one of the only parts of the film I truly enjoyed. So I'm sitting there for an hour and forty minutes and whenever a song finishes I think "How in the world did a script with such sloppy and overplayed storytelling get such a great Disney style score?" Well the credits answered that one for me; Alan Menken. He did all of the music and boy did it feel like Alan Menken. The songs felt very "return to form" Disney and even though they weren't the catchiest or most memorable songs in existence, they had a very fitting and magical feeling to them. Sort of like what Disney did with "Enchanted"; gave us songs that weren't going to be part of most children's nostalgic childhood but they complemented the film very well and made us happy. The score is the same deal, excellent. It fit the epic fairy tale mood and blended in to the film, loved it. Might actually get myself to obtain the soundtrack because, who doesn't love Alan Menken's work?

The CG. My goodness. This movie looked breathtakingly beautiful and for a while I could hardly believe Disney was the company to conceive this film (though a look at the credits shows that Pixar had a heavy hand in the production). The textures! THE TEXTURES! The water. The hair. The eyes! The eyes, when someone would cry you could actually see the water slowly develop, the pupils change shape and the blood vessels appear. Everything had such an explicit attention to detail that I swear if you muted the film and played certain sections in loops, you might soil yourself from the sheer beauty. Granted, not everything looked excellent but the environment blew my mind. The grass, the flowers, the trees, the clothes, the buildings, the sky, the lighting, the paper on the lanters and everything, everything looked phenomenal. I swear the only reason Disney released this film was to say "Look what we can do. Look forward to it." I have to say that kids will love this film and for anybody else who doesn't, at least you'll have the visuals to entrance you. That's what I did during the boring moments, I lost myself in the film's aura. The eye thing, that really impressed me. I know that probably sounds extremely silly but you'd have to see it. Oh man were my eyes on fire.

The ending was a disappointment as well. There was a chance for the film to redeem itself in terms of emotional development but instead we get a cop out that is sort of borrowed from the original tale of Rapunzel. It's just too irritating to handle because you feel emotionally robbed when the creators tug at your heart strings and then play the "just kidding, this is a kids movie, duh!" card. To be fair though, there are some good emotional moments in the film. There's a scene in the later half of the film that shows the king and queen mourning on the day of Rapunzel's birth. Nothing is said, not a word and yet it brought me to tears while I heard the people next to my wife and I say "That is so sad.". There's a lot of good moments between Rapunzel and Gothel, including a very Disney-Menken style song between the two called "Mother Knows Best" which was a lot of fun.

In the end the animation, the graphics and Rapunzel herself keep this movie from being somebody dragging you through the land of Dull by your teeth. Every single character beyond Rapunzel is a dull, overused cliche' and the animal sidekicks are silent, worthless, cheap laughs that only serve as a very obvious marketing ploy for the kids and fangirls/boys. The story itself has interesting moments but they all seem to be moments that are borrowed from the original story. Anything Disney added in on their own is lazy and that laziness leads to way too many moments of downtime or slow pacing that aren't unbearable, just no fun. As I said before, kids will love this movie and I suggest taking them. Its got the formula to appeal to so many people and I think that regardless of what I or anyone else says, to see it if you're interested. There's enough fun to get you through it even if you come out feeling the way I did. Beyond that though, I couldn't get myself to enjoy the film for what it is because what it is, -is- lackluster. I still love Disney though. I just hope they do better next time.