TANGLED - REVIEW


Before Disney had the mega-hit it was looking for with Frozen, there was an attempt to nail the non-Pixar 3D animation formula with Tangled, a new take on the classic Rapunzel fairy-tale. 

With The Princess and the Frog, it looked like Disney was ready to be Disney again, bringing back a unique style of 2D animation now long dormant. Sadly, Tangled isn't another hand-drawn effort but rather a quality, polished-looking 3D treat which looks about 10 times better than any of the Shrek films yet still very 90's in spirit... in a good way.

Tangled looks modern but it's very much a throwback to the likes of The Little Mermaid so your enjoyment of the film will probably depend on whether you like that type of Disney film or if you hate it with a passion. The story of Rapunzel, like the Frog Prince, is an inevitable, safe choice for Disney but both stories have clearly been handled with a lot of heart and with 80's kids in mind.

Now the film itself, it should be said, is very derivative: the humour feels a bit like Shrek (but funny), the main guy looks like Aladdin, Rapunzel (Mandy Moore) looks like just about every Disney princess (though with longer hair), the villain also feels pretty generic and yet the whole thing feels fresh and is still a lot of fun. Mostly thanks to the pretty amusing combination of a wacky horse and a gecko (both basically steal the show), a more modern approach to jokes and musical numbers. The latter are, it must be said, catchier than most of The Princess and the Frog's but still there is a lack of genuinely memorable tunes there.

"A Whole New World", "Part Of Your World", remember those?

Anyway, on the whole, Tangled was another move in the right direction for Disney. All it needed was a little more originality, catchier songs and a better ending (this one is just annoying, think Pokemon The Movie), something which Frozen delivered soon enough.

Kids and some, more retro-nostalgic adults will love it.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT - REVIEW

Image
Finally free from the clutches of the iconic Original Series , Picard and co. finally got their own movie to play with and delivered this much better, much darker, much less gimmicky outing. This time, we're introduced to the Borgs, a race of soulless, zombie-like drones capable of assimilating people completely. A popular race of bad guys in the series, their Hellraiser -style S&M look certainly begged for a movie! First Contact opens with Picard having a nightmare about the time he almost became a Borg forever and little by little, as the current Borg threat increases, he starts to crack up, feeling a responsibility to sort that problem out himself as he still has a slight connection to them but also wanting a kind of revenge, closure if you will, for what they did to him the first time around. The plot sees the crew of the Enterprise witness the Earth get completely assimilated by the Borgs so they go back in time before Earth made its "first contact" with al
Read more

24: SEASON 1 - REVIEW

Image
I know, I'm like 100 years late. But I'm The "Retro" Critic! :P I remember catching a glimpse of this iconic show back in the day and actually finding it pretty entertaining. Sadly, I hadn't followed the thread from the very beginning so it felt like catching the season about halfway through would be a bit of a waste. I decided to wait until I could check it out on DVD. 10 years later... Well I finally made it, that's the main thing, right? So was it worth the wait? What do I make of this very first season? It's good. I thought it would be quite good and it was. Basically I'm rarely taken by a cop-themed series unless you've got a mad scientist in there ( Fringe ), evil twins ( Alias ) or... Columbo ( Columbo ). But 24 did a hell of a good job keeping me entertained throughout and making me care about MOST of what was going on. Kiefer Sutherland's Jack Bauer is a hard one to dislike and is pretty much the glue holding the whole sho
Read more

THE ADDAMS FAMILY MUSICAL - REVIEW

Image
 Looks like every Broadway comedy musical these days is trying to be The Producers ... Mel Brooks' hugely successful show now being the basic template for shows based on movies (with the exception of the admittedly *ahem* unique Spiderman musical), after Dirty Rotten Scoundrels we're treated to Broadway's The Addams Family. An odd release but probably an inevitable one. Not based on any of the movies, the story actually follows up from past adaptations and sees a now grown-up Wednesday falling in love with a "normal" dude and having to face her unconventional family. It's essentially Addams Family Values with Wednesday taking on the Fester role. A good idea which should please both fans of the films and those looking to see something new. But what works for The Producers just doesn't work for everything. Nathan Lane as Gomez Addams? So much for the tall, suave, maniacal Gomez we all know and love! Don't get me wrong, I love Nathan Lane but list
Read more