Tangled
Welcome back Disney.
Last year, the Mouse House returned to cel animation with “The Princess and the Frog”; however entertaining, it didn’t really make a strong lasting impression. “Tangled,” on the other hand, is a genuine return to form for the studio that brought us “The Little Mermaid,” “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” and “Beauty and the Beast.” It may be CG-animated, but their riff on Rapunzel has all the elements of their ink-and-paint classics.
Much of the film’s success falls on the casting of Mandy Moore as Rapunzel. Not only does she possess the pipes for Alan Menken & Glenn Slater’s delightful (if not terribly hummable) songbook, but, in my opinion, the pop singer has also always been an underrated actress. A lot of that has to do with some of the choices she’s made (“Chasing Liberty” & “License to Wed”- sigh), but films like “Dedication,” “How to Deal,” “Saved!,” and “A Walk to Remember” have given her smart and versatile material to work with, and she’s made the most of it. Working from a winning script by Dan Fogelman (“Bolt,” “Cars”), her Rapunzel is a Disney princess to rival Belle, Ariel, and Jasmine in the best tradition of the Disney formula: feisty, intelligent, clever, and delightful to follow. And when she’s singing “When Will My Life Begin?” or “I’ve Got a Dream,” it’s a wonder why Moore wasn’t approached to do a Disney film sooner (as great as Amy Adams was, Moore would have been perfect for 2007’s wonderful “Enchanted” as well).
It’s never just a one-woman show with Disney, though. With their twist on this classic fairy tale from the Brothers Grimm, there’s also a cute chameleon named Pascal, a determined royal horse named Maximus (no relation to Russell Crowe’s “Gladiator”), a pair of deeper-than-they-appear thugs (voiced by the likes of Jeffrey Tambor and Brad Garrett), a suave “prince” in thief Flynn Rider (Zachary Levi, hamming it up hilariously),and of course, an evil “stepmother” (voiced by Donna Murphy, whose wicked version of “Mother Knows Best” makes the song great Oscar-bait in a particularly weak year) who’s keeping Rapunzel in the tower for her own nefarious purposes. Artfully directed by Nathan Greno and Byron Howard with the same beauty and sense of fun as the masters at Pixar and the directors of classics past, “Tangled” looks to open a new door on the animation domination of the house that Walt built, and with John Lasseter at the creative reigns (look for the Pixar founder’s name as “executive producer”), Disney might just regain the title of animation kings.
