Sunday, December 12, 2010

Tangled - A Review

A breathe of fresh air into a long time children's fairy tale, Rapunzel.


But, Tangled simply lacks the wow factor.


Enjoyable, yes.
Hilarious, quite.
Amazing. Sadly, no. I have seen the same things done better in other animations.

Tangled is centered around young Rapunzel, the bandit Flynn Rider, Pascal the chameleon/lizard/frog, and Maximus the horse.

The story is more or less the same with the original Grimm Brothers version except that Rapunzel was born a princess from a Queen who ate some magical flowers instead of a Peasant's daughter who steals Dame Gothel's lettuce. The ending of the story is as expected, happily ever after ending.


However, I have to praise Disney for paying homage to the origin of the story Rapunzel despite changing so many details in the story. Mother Gothel, which means "protective parent" in German, was really portrayed as a protective parent despite her ulterior motives instead of being an evil witch. Flynn Riders's real name is also of German heritage.

Back to the story. Tangled, despite being a children's movie, has a certain degree of maturity. It deals with teen rebellion, romance, sacrifice, dreams and so on. Yes, from the naive point of view.


The several light hearted moments are hardly memorable but I really like the two animals, Pascal and Maximus. They are so funnily cute! And Maximus has me thinking the whole time, what kind of doggy horse is that?


However, it is a little disappointing to see so many similarities between Shrek and Tangled. Rapunzel is the younger Princess Fiona, Flynn Rider is the handsomer Shrek, Pascal is the smaller Puss in Boots and Maximus is the dumber version of Donkey. Even the Ducklings bandit is like the supporting fairy tales characters from Shrek!

On the technical side, I think this one is a rather good improvement from the animation team. Love the scenes where the dam broke and where Rapunzel and Flynn watched the lanterns. It was so real and so believable!


And I think Flynn is kinda handsome, in a Zachary Levi way =)


Ratings : 6.5/10.

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