Tangled

 

Year:  2010

Filming:  Color

Length:  100 minutes

Genre:  Animation/Fantasy/Family

Maturity:  PG (for mild fantasy violence and brief rude humor)

Cast:  Mandy Moore (Rapunzel), Zachary Levi (Flynn Rider), Donna Murphy (Mother Gothel), Ron Perlman (Stabbington Brother), M.C. Gainey (Captain of the Guard), Jeffrey Tambor (Big Nose Thug), Brad Garrett (Hook Hand Thug), Paul F. Tompkins (Short Thug), Richard Kiel (Vlad), Delaney Rose Stein (Young Rapunzel)

         

Directors:  Nathan Greno and Byron Howard

Personal Rating:  4 Stars

***

     For a long while, people urged towards watching some recently-released 3D animated flicks. I was generally hesitant, as I tend towards the simpler artistic style of a previous generation and am wary of excessive CGI. Nevertheless, when I watched the beginning of Tangled over at a friend’s house, this fanciful new take on the story of Rapunzel brought a smile to my face, and I decided I really should take her advice and order it from the library to see what happened after our heroine knocks the outlaw in the head with a frying pan!

     Our story begins with a flower, a very special, magical flower that has the power to heal illnesses and unlock the secret to eternal youth. An old woman named Mother Gothel hordes the flower in order to make herself young and beautiful ever and anon. But when the queen of the kingdom becomes deathly ill, soldiers are sent to track down the flower to heal her. When they finally locate it, she drinks the liquefied golden petals and is restored to health. Later, her baby daughter winds up having hair as gold as the flower…and with the same healing and rejuvenating properties!

    But Mother Gothel isn’t about to take the loss of the flower lightly, and she kidnaps the baby princess, realizing that by fondling her hair and singing the same song she used to sing to the flower (as the narrator observes, creepy, right?), she is able to restore her youth and beauty just as well. She keeps the child in a high tower so no one will find her, and raises the little princess as her own. She is named Rapunzel, and grows up to be an artistic and spirited teen, turning her tower into a place of light and creativity. However, she still yearns for contact with the outside world, which her “mother” always denies her.

    However, Rapunzel gets her chance to sneak away when an unsuspecting, rather cute outlaw named Flynn Rider climbs into her tower for sanctuary after stealing the royal crown! She convinces him to be her guide so she can go see the floating lanterns that are released every year on the long-lost princess’s birthday. Of course, Rapunzel is unaware that she is in fact said princess, and she just wants to enjoy the experience and soak in the beauty. So Flynn, a good-at-heart sort of guy who also has just been hit in the head by a frying pan, agrees that he will take Rapunzel out on the adventure of a lifetime, and she in return will keep his bag of treasure safe for him.

    Along the way, they encounter a variety of obstacles, including a gallant mount that seems bent on trying to sabotage Flynn, soldiers of the king bent on trying to capture Flynn, and Mother Gothel, who has now realized Rapunzel has escaped and is determined to get her and her magical hair back to the tower. At the same time, Rapunzel transforms Flynn and inspires him to give on himself and reform his roguish behavior.

But as they begin to fall in love, secrets of the past and misconceptions of the present threaten to tear them apart. Will Rapunzel have the courage to liberate herself from past bonds and embrace a whole new world?

    Tangled is an artistic delight, combining the best of both worlds with regards to traditional flat-screen animation and new digitalized 3-D animation. The floating lanterns scene is particularly dazzling with regards to multi-dimensional effect, song choice, and general romantic feel. Everything from facial expressions to flowing hair looked incredibly realistic. The animators and technicians managed to capture not just accurate form but also movement, not a mean feat whatsoever. They also managed to capture the flavor of past time periods, and integrate them into a modern expression. Occasionally I wish the slang was curtailed to keep with an older mood, but I can take it in stride. As a note, I noticed that the costuming used for the guards looks like a combination of Ancient Roman Legionaries, the Vatican Swiss Guards, and British Infantry from the Napoleonic Wars!

    Rapunzel is a charming leading lady with spunk, ingenuity, and quite a bit of courage. While she loves her smothering “mother”, she cannot bear to remain shut up in her tower forever, and must allow her spirited nature more room to move. Like the Lady of Shallot, the final break with the past comes with the arrival of a man, who finally gives her the chance she’s been waiting for to broaden her horizons. It was great the way Tangled had Rapunzel’s golden, healing hair is tied in with the golden flower with healing powers that was given her ailing mother when she was enduring a difficult pregnancy. This explains why Mother Gothel kidnaps our heroine to begin with, and allows her hair to grow so long. This creative explanation in Tangled gives it one up on Frozen, which basically gave explanation for the incredible princess-powers that generate the plot.

    Honestly, I feel rather sorry for Mother Gothel. She’s self-consumed and can be pretty ruthless when pushed to desperation. She tries to hoard the magic flower and keep it all to herself when other people are in need. If she had been willing to share it to begin with, perhaps she wouldn’t have to go through so much work to keep it later on. Plus her kidnapping a baby princess for her magic hair in order to be forever young is pretty parasitic, to say the least! I have to wonder why she wants to be forever young in the first place...does she have any boy-friend prospects, or anything?

     And yet, I’m afraid it is her character that makes me have one major reservation about the movie. For all her faults, Mother Gothel is not your typical Disney witch. She’s much more human than that. We can’t despise her outright. While her motives may have started out quite base, she did raise Rapunzel as her own, and was the only mother the little girl ever knew. There is a scene in which Rapunzel asks Gothel to go get her some special shell paint for her birthday. Gothel had just freaked out at Rapunzel when she asked to leave the tower and go see the lanterns, and now she feels guilty. Hence, even though it will mean a long journey, she agrees to go as requested.

    The point I’m trying to make is that deep down inside, I believe that in spite of her manic desire for eternal youth she has come to love Rapunzel, as much as she is capable of loving anyone, and Rapunzel has come to love her as well. I suppose I didn’t like the assumption projected in the film that just because Gothel wasn’t her “real” mother the bond could somehow be instantaneously dissolved with no further ado. As I’ve expressed in the past, the concept of family as much as friendship depends more on emotional attachment as opposed to bloodlines.

    To make the whole situation more intense, Mother Gothel dies a terrible death, falling out of the tower window after being tripped by Paschal the chameleon, ostensibly one of the good guys! Rapunzel doesn’t seem lastingly disturbed by this. Granted, Gothel did stab Flynn a few minutes earlier, but all of these complex relationships should have put Rapunzel in therapy by now! I mean, this woman who has been the only mother you’ve ever known dies horribly in front of your eyes, and how is the restoration of Flynn supposed to make up for that and give the finale an oh-too-happy feel?

    I would have liked it so much better if Gothel had actually had a conversion experience, realizing that the most important thing is relationships, not physical beauty. Otherwise, she could have just disappeared into the forest or something, and spared us all from some of the traumatic connotations! I’m totally in favor of Rapunzel getting away from her, since has shown herself to be a possessive spirit and toxic character, but does it all have to end so gruesomely? Especially for a kiddie flick?

    Of course, there is a redeeming aspect to all this, since Flynn sacrificially cuts off Rapunzel’s magic hair that could have healed him after being stabbed. Like in Beauty and the Beast, the protagonist dies, but is restored to life through the tears of his lady love. The only loss here…I miss Rapunzel’s cool, glowing, song-reactive, healing, youth restoring, golden flower hair! :-(

    But beyond all these rather intense aspects, there is some genuinely humorous content, mostly revolving around the irrepressible Flynn and his less-than-amicable horse who is “out to get him”! Also, we get to stop by “The Snuggly Duckling Inn”, un-aptly named thug-land extraordinaire! Even though some of the action sequences are over-extended and over-the-top, the mix between excitement and character development is pretty good. Plus, Flynn’s narration is genuinely hilarious, and helps draw the viewer into the story as one of his confederates. I’m thinking here of the method used in Sir Laurence Olivier’s outstanding production of Richard III…only this is the fun version!

    Needless, to say, the “Prince Charming” bit just doesn’t enter the equation here! Not that I mind in this case (Flynn, for the most part, rocks!), although I do like my fair share of  genuinely noble nobleman too, and sometimes think there is a modern conspiracy afoot to constantly belittle the landed and make them horrendously unheroic. Nevertheless, it should be noted that Rapunzel is a royal, as are her parents (whose characters are scarcely explored at all, but still they seem like good-guys). Hence, there isn’t a complete bias towards the lower classes…;-)

     So my generally feeling towards Disney’s reboot of the Rapunzel story is mostly positive, with a few reservations, mostly involving Mother Gothel.  The artistic quality alone is impressive, and the plot holds together much better than some other Disney princess stories such as the botched-up Brave and to a lesser extent the frazzled Frozen. Some believe that Tangled may in fact have ushered a neo-Renaissance for Disney studios. Whether or not the productions live up to this hoped-for generational trend is yet to be ascertained, but Tangled at least will continue to be enjoyed as a classic for years to come, entertaining, thrilling, and teaching lessons about spiritual freedom and sacrificial love.

Flynn Rider (Zachary Levi) and Rapunzel (Mandy Moore) fall in love