Tangled (2010)
Directed by: Byron Howard, Nathan Greno
Written by: Dan Fogelman, Jacob Grimm, Wilhelm Grimm
Starring: Mandy Moore, Ron Perlman Donna Murphy, Zachary Levi
After receiving the healing powers from a magical flower, the baby Princess Rapunzel is kidnapped from the palace in the middle of the night by Mother Gothel,who knows that the flower’s magical powers are now growing within the golden hair of Rapunzel, and to stay young, she must lock Rapunzel in her hidden tower. Many years later and Rapunzel is now a teenager and her hair has grown to a length of 70-feet. She has been in the tower her entire life, and she is curious of the outside world. Then bandit Flynn Ryder scales the tower and is taken captive by Rapunzel. She strikes a deal with the charming thief; to act as her guide to travel to the place where the floating lights come from that she has seen every year on her birthday……
I should have known this would be a disappointment when Disney [well the studio called Disney which doesn’t much resemble the Disney of yesteryear] in their infinite wisdom changed the title from Rapunzel to Tangled, but as a Disney fan I expect some kind of magic from each animated film. Tangled has little of that magic, it attempts to combine a typical fairytale plot ala Sleeping Beauty with a Shrek-kind of attitude but neither really works-the main story is only mildly involving and even dull at times [with a final act that is a little rushed and almost incoherent], while the humourous element doesn’t really work because it’s not especially funny. The heroine is inconsistently characterised and alternates between superwoman and old-style damsel in distress, while other characters are either wasted [i.e.Maximillian the horse] or start off interesting and then have little done with them [Madame Gotell the main villain], and some look terribly like variations of older Disney characters. Honestly, imagine Bolt as a horse? You get Maximillian. The CG is mostly fine, with lovely backgrounds and Rapunzel’s hair gorgeously evoked, and the much praised lantern scene is indeed beautiful [though I didn’t bother seeing this in 3D as I didn’t want to see it darker than it should be]. However Alan Menken’s songs sound like bland rehashes of older songs and are really quite poor. Tangled does just about entertain if you forget about Disney’s great legacy and seems to be pleasing kids judging from the showing I was at, but it just seems as if Disney are playing safe almost to the point of blandness with the film. The much criticised The Princess And The Frog was far better than this.
Rating: 
[pt-filmtitle]Tangled[/pt-filmtitle]
Ah see, I really enjoyed this one. Dunno, may have been the mood I was in on the day but something about it really tickled my Disney bones. My favourite character was the Horse, a splendid creation that had me laughing out loud many times