Tangled 3/5
Lusciously animated and frantically paced, this CGI throwback to the traditional Disney princess movie is nevertheless the definition of "throwaway entertainment", and will sadly not hold much interest for anyone not of the female persuasion and/or over the age of eleven. In a day and age where Cars rules the kiddy market and The Incredibles (literally) kick ass at the box office, there is precious little space for this sort of little-girl wish-fulfillment porn, all pink dresses and shiny tiaras and a hunky animated McDreamy to swoon over. The intended demographic will lap it up, of course, but that is not saying much, considering they are the same kind of people who unironically enjoy Barbie movies.
Stylistically, Tangled is such a pastiche of the typical Disney-princess movie, it borders on parody. Where Princess and The Frog got away with rehashing the genre due to interesting visuals and a unique approach to the music, Tangled feels much more stale and hackneyed, revisiting all the tropes people came to mock in the animated genre. Here is a film which unironically presents a cute, mugging animal sidekick (in 2011, no less!), where people burst into song at every turn, and where the beautiful princess ends up with the hunky bad boy who is really not so bad... Yes, it's THAT sort of movie. The only things separating it from the likes of Sleeping Beauty or The Little Mermaid are CGI animation and several rungs in the quality ladder.
Which is not to say Tangled is totally devoid of merit. There are at least two great voice performances, by Donna Murphy as the mustache-twirling Mother Gothel (well, she would, if she had a mustache) and Mandy Moore as Rapunzel herself. The latter, in particular, nearly runs away with the movie, and contributes to rank interest up a few notches by making the captive princess with the magic hair a believable, fully rounded character. Rapunzel initially strays dangerously close to Belle or Ariel (from those far superior, ageless, sexless movies from two decades ago), but quickly asserts herself as her own character, easily becoming the most interesting thing about the film. The combination of Moore's bubbly, ditzy vocal performance and the skinny, flat, fresh-faced character design helps Rapunzel look, feel, talk and act like a real teenage girl. This is not your picture-perfect, full-bosomed princess. Rapunzel is clumsy, bright-eyed, gullible, unsure of herself, and makes cringingly horrible decisions (repeatedly). Sure, she is also resourceful, driven, and moderately spunky, but even when she has future boyfriend Flynn Rider (Zachary Levi) trapped in her magic hair and is blackmailing him into helping her, one gets the feeling that she's play-acting, pretending to be this tough, self-assured woman in order to hide what she really is - a hesitant seventeen-year-old winging it as she goes along. Overall, Moore and the screenwriters craft an endearing character who, unlike most other princesses aside from Belle and Mulan, is strong enough to carry the movie.
And it's a good thing she is so interesting, because her love interest is possibly the blandest character this side of Prince Eric. Like Rapunzel, he initially comes across as a combination of several other characters. The first time we see him, he's leaning off something in an adventurous pose, a la John Smith or the aforementioned Prince Eric. A moment later, his swagger reminds the viewer of Gaston, and his character design inevitably brings to mind Tulio, from The Road To El Dorado (by rival company Dreamworks - oops.) Oh, and the horse who is chasing him, Max, is an uneasy mix of Donkey's Stallion form (from Shrek 2), Achilles from The Hunchback of Notre Dame and - again! - the horse from Road To El Dorado. Unfortunately, there is not much more to Flynn than there was to any of those characters, and one inevitably ends up scratching their heads over just what Rapunzel sees in this bloke. Then one remembers she is a ditzy seventeen-year-old, and that this is the first man she has ever seen - and, suddenly, it all makes sense.
Still, Flynn can count himself lucky to be surrounded by such interesting, complex characters as Rapunzel and the delightfully posh Mother Gothel, who manages to be mustache-twirlingly scheming while at the same time coming across as not completely evil - her motive for adopting and overprotecting Rapunzel is selfish, sure, but one feels there may be something more to their relationship than the usual "evil stepmother" bit. And, unlike Flynn, Mother Gothel manages to be markedly different from other evil stepmothers in Disney history - this is not Lady Tremayne, or the Wicked Queen. She has elements of both characters, but - unlike the leading man - incorporates them into her own, individual persona, making for a satisfying, pathetic (in a good way) villain.
With such interesting antagonists at its core, it is therefore a shame that more is not made of Tangled. The movie is as fluffy and airheaded as its leading lady, and seems to be there mostly for little girls to gawp at the pretty dresses and giggle at the pratfalls (of which there are a few). There is even a lantern-lit duet between the two romantic leads - which, as everyone knows, is the Disney-movie version of a sex scene. In amidst all this, the story is almost ancillary, serving mostly as a way to tide the movie over from adventurous scene to romantic scene to comic pratfall, and earning it the classification of "wish-fullfilment porn". The songs are similarly forgettable, being far from Alan Menken's best work, and while some of the jokes do hit, they do so not through clever zingers or double-entendres, but by appealing to the human species' basic instinc to laugh when someone falls over or is conked on the head with a frying pan.
Overall, the best way to think of Tangled might be as an animated rom-com. All the tropes of the genre are there, with the only differences being that there are songs and that the main character is not a vapid self-entitled bitch, but merely an adorable, misguided teenage ditz. But while this movie is nowhere near as noxious as most rom-coms (this one is wholesome and perfectly appropriate for little girls to draw from), it shares one telling characteristic with them - it is never anything but a fluffy time-waster, its longevity ending the minute the credits roll. And while there are worse distractions to pop in your preteen daughter's DVD player for two hours, there are also much better ones.
