Tangled

While Tangled is a beautifully animated film, the entire time that it was running before my eyes I kept thinking of the film that Disney originally announced and released artwork for. It would have been a stunningly gorgeous hand-drawn animated film made to look like French artist Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s work, keeping the original fairy tale’s name, Rapunzel, and Kristin Chenoweth as the titular heroine. To me, it would have been a more interesting project. But, maybe, I just miss the warmth and humanity that hand-drawn animation provides. While Tangled may not be the best film in the Disney canon, it’s a light-hearted and very humorous adventure.

What’s most refreshing about Tangled is how it puts the lie to the irony-laced, increasingly under-cooked, and artistically painted-in-a-corner entertainments like the Shrek franchise. Here is something that embraces its good-natured fairy tale origins, and finds poetic visuals and moments of true splendor in rendering them.

The scene where Rapunzel, after being held captive for most of her life, discovers the outside world is both hilarious and moving. The reaction shots of her character oscillating wildly between “Yippee!” and “I need to be punished!” are a perfect depiction of one’s teenage years. But it’s the way in which her character discovers the breeze, the feel of the grass beneath her feet, and the way cool water feels on her hand that is a quiet and artistically powerful way to depict the awakening of her senses, awareness, and ascent into adulthood.

Or the scene in which she sees thousands of lanterns being released into the air on her birthday. Which is breathtaking in its beauty, and joyous in its emotional uplift. It’s practically otherworldly in the way that it engulfs you. Behold, the power that only movies, and in this case animation, can provide.

And while Alan Menken, always a welcome presence in my mind in any Disney project, churns out serviceable songs, none of them truly stick. They touch you, mesmerize you, and greatly move the story along, but none of them are as memorable as “Under the Sea,” “Be Our Guest,” or “Out There.” Mandy Moore’s thin voice may be part of the problem, but even Donna Murphy’s diva-licious villain doesn’t linger in the imagination much.

It’s really the humor that lingers. All of the truly great Disney movies rely upon effective villains and sidekicks, be they good or bad. Tangled has memorable animal sidekicks, but our villain isn’t ever truly evil in the same pleasing way as Ursula or Maleficent, just passive-aggressive, abusive, and narcissistic. Where's the grand-scale plan? Stephen Sondheim's tormented and contradictory Witch in Into the Woods hints at what could have been with this character. Alas, it was not to be. But back to those sidekicks for a minute, the chameleon and horse in particular. Many of the best gags, including a reoccurring one relating to frying pans, either are started or continuously brought about by their presence.

Much like The Princess and the Frog, Tangled returns us to a happier time when animation was driven by warmth, humor, characters, and stories. This deliberate rejection of post-modernist conventions actually makes this feel like a breath of fresh air. Now, if only we could return to hand-drawn animation.