Tangled is as elegant and exciting as old-school Disney features get. It has the music, it has the charm, and it has the helpful nonhuman acting as the protagonist’s conscience. It’s also gorgeously animated, with a simple plot that harkens back to the studio’s golden age while maintaining the ability to capture the imagination and attention of today’s kids (and adults).
True fact: this movie was originally supposed to be called “Rapunzel,” but execs at Disney figured that wouldn’t appeal much to little boys (they’d made a mistake, the thinking went, with an earlier feature, The Princess and the Frog). Thus the title change.
So you know the story of Rapunzel, right? Cute lass, trapped up in a tower, had long hair, etc.? Same basic idea here, only Rapunzel is secretly – not a spoiler – the lost princess of the kingdom, spirited away as an infant by an evil crone; seems Rapunzel’s hair is not only long but magical as all get out, and the old crone has been able to use the hair – and the girl’s song – to retain her youth.
Every year on the princess’s birthday, the still-mourning kingdom releases hundreds of lanterns into the sky, hoping that somehow their lost child will find her way home. And every year, Rapunzel sees these lanterns and wonders about their source – could they have anything to do with her, since they appear only on her birthday? Enter Flynn Rider (har har), a thief on the run from that very same kingdom for, you know, thieving. Anyway, he runs into Rapunzel, and they make a pact – he takes her to see where the lanterns come from, and she’ll return to him the crown that he had just stolen from aforementioned kingdom but she took from him after whacking him on the head with a frying pan. You know, standard Disney fairy-tale stuff.
For the most part, the movie is just plain funny. It’s about dreams and hopes and how you shouldn’t let go of either, even in the face of defeat. And that’s a great message, sure. But it helps that Rapunzel and Flynn are aptly cast (respectively, the known Mandy Moore and the unknown Zachery Levi) and that each isn’t just a caricature. There’s a lot of whimsy to go along with the derring-do, a word that’s just not used enough nowadays. (Derring-do, not whimsy.)
And yes, it has plenty of heart. It has all the hallmarks of a Disney movie without the debit of latter-day stunt casting. It focuses itself on Rapunzel and Flynn working together to allow the former to realize her dream. Because there are not distinctly comical figures in the movie, the humor simply evolves; it’s not forced or distracting. Side note, though – one of the best characters in the film is Maximus the horse; he’s at odds with Flynn (trying to capture him, as a horse of the palace) and likes Rapunzel, and he has more personality and expressiveness than most of the humans.
Tangled: ***1/2
