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Tangled
| Released |
28 January 2011 |
| Director |
Nathan Greno, Byron Howard |
| Starring |
Zachery Levi, Mandy Moore, Donna Murphy, Ron Perlman, Brad Garrett, Jeffrey Tambor |
| Writer(s) |
Dan Fogelman |
| Producer(s) |
Roy Conli |
| Origin |
United States |
| Running Time |
100 minutes |
| Genre |
Animation |
| Rating |
G |
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Old/New School Disney.
With the success of Pixar and Dreamworks computer animated features such as the Toy Story and Shrek franchises, classic animation has taken something of a back seat in recent years. Disney had great hopes last year for The Princess and the Frog, but although it was reviewed well and was far from a flop it didn’t do as well as they’d hoped. With Tangled, Disney have attempted to make a 3D CGI animated feature that has the look of classic Disney. It was an expensive undertaking and with a budget of 260 million dollars, this is the second more expensive film ever made!
It’s a version of the classic Rapunzel story as we see in an opening prologue where a precious magical plant is used by an evil old crone Mother Gothel (Donna Murphy) to maintain her youth. When the pregnant Queen gets sick, the King sends his army to find the magical plant. When they do, they use its magical properties to cure the Queen and she gives birth to Rapunzel, who has magical blonde hair. However when she’s still only a baby, Mother Gothel kidnaps her and raises her as her own child, hidden away from the world in an isolated tower. She uses Rapunzel’s magic hair to maintain her youth and scares her into believing that the world outside is too dangerous for her to go out in. But Rapunzel (Mandy Moore) turns eighteen and begins to yearn to leave the tower.
Her chance comes when she encounters an opportunistic thief, Flynn Rider (Zachary Levi). Along with the Stabbington Brothers (both voiced by Ron Perlman) Rider has stolen a precious crown from the Royal Palace. On the run from both the pursuing army and his cohorts, whom he’s betrayed, Rider tries to hide in the tower but is soon captured by the surprisingly resourceful Rapunzel. She takes the crown and makes a deal with Rider that she’ll only return it in return for him guiding her to the kingdom. He reluctantly agrees and they set off on their adventure.
The plot is basically old-fashioned Disney but the humour is a bit more contemporary with the Rider making plenty of glib one-liners, which are a bit hit and miss really. Most of the funniest moments actually come from two non-speaking characters: Rapunzel’s pet chameleon Pascal and Maximus, the horse of the Captain of the Guard who pursues Rider with relentless dedication even when separated from his owner. Both of these get more laughs with simple expressions than Rider does with his wisecracks.
The voice actors do a good job in truth, Moore is sweet but appealingly feisty as Rapunzel and Donna Murphy vamps it up a storm as the evil Mother Gothel. Levi is decent enough as Rider, although we could have probably done with less of the one-liners. The plot flows nicely along and it’s funny enough and sentimental enough to keep most adults and children happy. It’s also a visual treat, particularly the scenes with Rapunzel’s magic hair, which were reportedly a technical nightmare to accomplish.
The only drawback are the songs, those bloody awful generic “Disney” songs which were supposedly written by Alan Menken and Robbie Slater but which were really spat out by an evil computer in the studio. This computer basically creates the same song again and again, normally accompanied by lyrics that start with “Look at me…..” as in “Look at me, flying above the clouds….” or “Look at me, climbing a mountain with my new love…” or “Look at me, doing crystal meth with a transvestite hooker…..”. Okay, I may have dreamed that last one, but these dreadful, saccharine songs have clogged up the Best Song Oscar category for far too long and something has to be done!!!
In truth there is an exception with the song “I’ve got a dream”, an amusing little number performed by Brad Garrett and a bunch of thugs in a pub, but the rest are awful and your heart sinks every time one of them starts. Thankfully there seems to be fewer songs in the second half of the film so that’s some relief.
Overall though this is a quality piece of family entertainment that should send most people home happy enough, just bring some earplugs for the songs!
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Jim O’Connor |
