Home

[pussinboots]

What's striking to me is the slack the Princess and the Frog is getting a year later. I thought it had generally been favorably received and that I was one of the few nitpickers who didn't think it was very good.

But we all agree then, Princess and the Frog was ultimately a narrative chaos with a nonsensical ending and mediocre musical numbers, a film that collapsed under the pressure to be The Little Mermaid. Bygones, water under the bridge, moving on.

Also apparent in the majority of reviews: The musical numbers are too restrained. Because Disney restrained Alan Menken, of course. Let that be a lesson.

Anyway, quite excited to see Tangled now!

[dagobert]

Tangled is performing very well in the US. It's making more money than expected. Over the Thanksgiving Weekend the movie made $69 Mio. That's impressive. I wonder if the movie would be more successful without competing against HP7.

http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=rapunzel.htm

[DisneyPictures]

Has anyone seen the film yet? I can't wait to hear what you all think, especially of Mother Gothel!


Here's an interview with Donna Murphy if you are interested!
//http://www.iamrogue.com/news/interviews/item/1771-exclusive-interview-donna-murphy-chats-about-villains-and-tangled.html

[Anthony]

Such great news that Tangled has been a success in the US.

Now: Go here and select "Something that I want" from the videos list. You won't be disappointed.

[Columbiad]

That is amazing! What a find. That must have taken them aggges to set up, unless it was all done with special editing.

God, I wish I worked there.

[fairytalelover14]

tatsächlich, die Person zu spielen Rapunzel ist Mandy Moore!!!  


Oh, sorry   :oops:  for the German i have German on the brain!!

i mean mandy moore plays rapunzel :mrgreen:

[Patrick]

That was so amazing, I am now looking forward to Tangled, ah shame we have to wait until January 28th argh.  This film is not getting anywhere near as bad pres as I expected, maybe for once Disney have hit all the right notes.

[Soap]

Just loved it!  :thumbs:
Finally some oldskool animation Disney magic in a real Disney classic.
Not a new Beauty and the Beast, but surely the best thing happend at WDA
for the last couple of years!
Keep up the great job and Disney will be back at the top again  

[pussinboots]

(Alright, minor spoiler alert. I won't give away the ending, but I'm not going to dance around everything.)

Let me start by saying I thoroughly enjoyed the film, probably the most fun I've had watching an animated film since Ratatouille. It's fun, it's exciting, it's touching, it's completely worthwhile. Where The Princess and the Frog (more comparisons ahead, ye be warned) came across as an overly contrived attempt at an old-fashioned Disney film, Tangled unexpectedly manages to achieve that goal while trying only half as hard.

Where the film really succeeds is the plot. Disney films more than rarely suffer from having too many cooks, too many motives and ambitions and special interest groups, resulting in beautifully animated, wonderfully-scored but ultimately misguided films such as The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules or Pocahontas. They desperately seek to be Beauty and the Beast on top of catering to the little girls of yet another uncharted minority, luring in the Academy, introducing a new record of technological splendor, etcetera. It's too much to bear and all of a sudden the film stops making much sense or forgets to be fun. It then collapses somewhere between the third act and the finale and ends in a big mess. Tangled is not one of these. They really tied this thing together well.

The problem was of course that the original story involves a rather textbook version of a damsel-in-distress story, and this obviously had to go in favor of something better suited to the sensibilities 2010. Which essentially means that while the film begins and ends like the fairy tale, everything in between is different. Enter awkward feisty girl power, Dreamworks repartee and possibly even a gratuitous "Matrix"-style action scene, you fear. Disney has been there before, with varying degrees of success. But Tangled goes nowhere it shouldn't. Rapunzel gets an adventure outside her tower, Flynn learns to care about another person and the two meet a whole bunch of friends and foes along the way. In between, there's psychological mother-daughter tension (giving the film its unique element and distancing it from the long list of campy Disney villains full of puns,) romance, comedy and even a dash of "Romancing the Stone." The ending, while ultimately expected and familiar, is cleverly played and invokes an emotional payoff I personally haven't experienced in a Disney film since, well, The Lion King. This isn't Jane deciding to live in the jungle or John Smith heading back to England for 17th Century NHS treatment, this is old-fashioned sobbing material.

Here, incidentally, is why I think Tangled's ending works and Princess and the Frog's did not. "Magic" endings of the Beauty and the Beast, Little Mermaid, Pinocchio sort work because they are a payoff deserved through a character's evolution. A character might have finally learned to care about another person or sacrificed their own happiness for a greater good, and as a consequence they receive a magical reward, healing their wounds or releasing them from some sort of physical prison. It's a tale as old as time deeply rooted in our Western sense of morality, and we instinctively feel that this is how it should be in the universe, so we accept the fantasy and relate to the humanity. In Princess and the Frog, Tiana and Naveen were de-frogged because of some silly bit of magical mechanics they had failed to recognize up until that point. Sure, they too had learned their valuable lessons along the way, but it didn't relate to the climax at all. But in Tangled, the sacrifice is there and the reward is hard-earned.

(Although it was a little shocking to see one of Rapunzel's cute animal friends murder a person in cold blood. It seems no one else is bothered by this, haha.)

As for the animation, it includes possibly the best CGI animation of human characters I've ever seen, and that includes Pixar's. I'm forever that curmudgeon who can't look beyond the plasticky nature of a human in CG, but somehow they finally got it right. The humans in Shrek look like third-rate animatronics, but Rapunzel and Flynn are as expressive as they would have been if drawn by a competent old-school animator. And Maximus the palace horse! What a treat to watch. Of course, I still would have preferred it in 2D. One doesn't have to stare too long at a film like Sleeping Beauty to see that no amount of high-definition rendering could ever compete with an artist's hand.

And that's the one real tragedy of Tangled — its success might be the nail in the coffin of handdrawn animation for a long time.

The music feels a little restrained, with Alan Menken's hands seemingly tied behind his back, but it's good enough. "Mother Knows Best" is hilariously mean, even if the animation in that scene emphasizes that not everything that works in handdrawn works in CG. "I See The Light" (the romantic-boat-ride song) feels genuine and not shoehorned in because they needed "one of those Tale as Old as Time-type numbers," even if it probably was. The bar brawl song however, "I Have a Dream," was in desperate need of Howard Ashman and slightly mediocre, I thought. It pales in comparison to "Gaston" or any of Ashman's other "big songs," but then Howard Ashman is dead and so Disney can hardly be blamed for not getting him on board again. A real highlight is the second "When Will My Life Begin" reprise, as reprises are something Alan Menken is just very good at.

Ultimately, Tangled will go down in history as a very good chapter in the Disney fairy tale canon. Not as a particularly daring or innovative one, not as this generation's Snow White or The Little Mermaid, but that won't stop anyone from enjoying it.

[never2old]

Great review pussinboots, beautifully said!!

I saw Tangled yesterday and I'm already hoping to see it again soon. Loved it! I had quite enjoyed Princess and the Frog, but I found it was lacking some believable emotion (except when Ray sings to Evangeline). Tangled doesn't. I had to get my tissues out a couple of times...

It's a gorgeous movie, the animation is beautiful (though I too would have liked to see this in 2D animation). And the story is great! It's got everything, brilliant characters (Mother Gothel is the best Disney villain we've seen in ages! As much as I liked Dr Facilier, I never quite understood his motivation), lots of humour (even my husband was laughing out loud quite a few times), and as I said, plenty of emotion as well.

What I liked the least was the music, but still, as soon as I got home I bought the album from iTunes and now after listening to it a few times, all the songs are growing on me... Even "I have a dream"! Though "Mother Knows Best" and "I See the Light" are still my favourites....

We saw it in 2D, maybe I'll go next week with my brother (another Disney fan) and see it in 3D... But I'm definitely seeing this movie again during the Christmas holidays

[dagobert]

Yesterday we have seen Tangled and we liked it a lot. It's definately one of the best Disney Animation movies in recent years. Hopefully it makes a lot of money, the movie would deserve it. We watched it in 3D and I think it is worth to watch it that way.

[JelleP]

I saw the movie today and it was amazing! I'm a big fan of Pascale now... ;-)

[pussinboots]

And it's at number one in a few European countries now! I do think it's been ignored by the European media, though. Did no one inform them? "Burlesque," which is absolutely dreadful, has gotten ten times the buzz, not to mention Harry Potter and Megamind. But then I suppose that sob story about Cher teaching little Christina Aguilera how to act makes for a snazzier story than "Disney makes pretty good movie again."

[jclaydon]

For those in the UK, the Daily Mail is running free previews of Tangled on Sunday 9th January at certain Odeon cinemas.  

See :
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/ushome/artic ... unday.html
for details.

You're supposed to buy the paper on Boxing Day for the password, but it seems it's already been revealed as MAXIMUS.  May need to still buy paper to take along for entry though.

[Masamune]

I'm going to a preview showing this Sunday. I can't wait!