Movie Review: Tangled

TITLE: Tangled
DISTRIBUTED BY: Disney animated studios
PEOPLE INVOLVED: Mandy Moore, Zachary Levi (aka Chuck), Donna Murphy
RELEASED: November 2010
PREMISE: In Disney's 50th (!) animated feature, they redo Rapunzel with some slight twists to the tale.
MY REVIEW: I was not sure why Disney chose to do Rapunzel in the beginning because frankly to me, she was always the most boring of the princesses. She was the eptiome of the "sit and wait for your prince" princesses that I kind of hate. But Disney managed to take a boring princess tale and make it interesting. Not a easy feat.
First off I'll talk animation. This movie is GORGEOUS. Some people complained that they went back to CGI and I must say I find it ironic that people are complaining about CGI now. Because in the beginning when Pixar started everyone WANTED CGI and complained about the hand-drawn stuff and said it was out-dated and hence why Disney stopped doing them after Lilo and Stich. Now suddenly CGI is bad we want what we had before. My how the tables have turned, no? Anyway, this complaint is stupid because they made the decision to do it in CGI before Princess and the Frog came out and everyone suddenly remembered they loved hand-drawn animation so hush up and enjoy the pretty people. Besides which, Disney has said they'll be doing a hand-drawn movie every two/three years now anyway. Next up is Winnie the Pooh (for some wierd reason). So animation is awesome, now onto the movie itself.
I loved this take on Rapunzel myself. For one, Rapunzel had PERSONALITY. Granted she was still Sueish as was Flynn but that's always the case in these animated flicks because you don't have much time to fully flesh out characters like you do in a two and a half hour movie. But for the time we got, I think we got a pretty good sense of who all these people were. Especially with the animal characters. Pascal and Maximus stole the show in my opinion. It always amazes me how Disney can take animal characters like this, not have them speak at all, yet give them such personality that you end up loving them. It's nice nod to oldish characters like this such as Dopey in Snow White, Figaro from Pinnochio and so on.
The story itself was also interesting, particularly when concerning Mother Gothel. She was a awesome villian, I must say. Donna Murphy was perfect for her (she also had the best song, in my opinion) and played her really well. It was interesting having a villian like her because she wasn't so obvious about being a villian. She was a manipulator and managed to keep Rapunzel under her thumb and locked up through some really messed up mother/daughter phsycology stuff. In a way it made her more scary then previous ones who were more obvious about their villianry like Cruella de Ville and so on.
This is not without it's flaws. The romance, while sweet, is a tad rushed like all Disney romances tend to be, and once again, sueish characters, and the ending felt a bit rushed and convenient. But overall? Really good and I approve of these new Disney Princesses who don't sit around waiting for their prince. That said, I'm confused about why Disney has decided not to do any more for now. I mean, how stupid is that? Especially when you look at their next couple of flicks: Mars Needs Moms (I've seen the trailer, and boy is it a downgrade from Tangled), Winnie the Pooh (again, WHY?) and even Cars 2 looks a bit lackluster to me (Cars is my least favorite Pixar film, I'm more excited about The Bear and The Bow personally but we have a year or two to wait for that unfortunately). How much you want to bet that in a year or two when these (not including Cars) don't make money Disney will change their mind?
WHO SHOULD SEE: Disney freaks, kids of all ages
MY RATING: Four out of Five animal sidekicks