Movie– Tangled
tl;dr– An awesome beta test for Frozen! 97%
Basics– This movie is loosely based on “Rapunzel.” The movie expands on the story by starting with the witch singing to a magic, sun-like flower to stay young. A Queen becomes deathly ill, and she sends men to find the flower. The queen uses the flower in a tea, become well, and later has a child with long blond hair. The witch returns and finds that singing to the hair will restore her youth, but when it is cut the hair loses its magic. She steals the child, puts her in the famous tower. This leads the King and Queen to release floating lanterns each year on her birthday in remembrance. Rapunzel wants to leave the tower to see the lights in the sky, but her witch “mother”, for obvious reasons, forbids her from ever leaving the tower. Near Rapunzel’s 18th birthday, a thief named Flynn Rider steals the stolen princess’ crown and runs into the forest abandoning his two cohorts along the way. He sneaks into the tower, and Rapunzel hits him with a frying pan. She steals and hides the crown promising to only return it when Flynn takes her to the lights. Flynn reluctantly agrees, and the adventure begins. Now the other thieves, the witch, and guards are all of the Rapunzel and Flynn! And it wouldn’t be Disney without some random sidekicks like a smart horse, a smart aleck chameleon, and some true love.
Plot-The plot follows the base story with lots of new fun elements. It’s a fun ride with some good songs, memorable moments, and crazy action sequences. After seeing all of Disney’s movies, it’s not Disney’s best. But, it’s up there. What costs it here is it’s not as memorable as many of their other films with a similar princess-kidnap-true love formula. 4.5/5
Acting-The characters do feel lifelike, and the actors do a good job of bringing them to that life. I didn’t recognize most of the voice actors, but two of the side characters did stand out: Ron Perlman and Brad Garrett. Obscure casting isn’t bad, but I was surprised. 5/5
Visuals-This movie is completely computer generated. It’s semi-realistic with comedic touches. I liked the style. After seeing a few of these, I think Disney is going to use this as their default style for animated pictures. 5/5
Summary- I really liked this movie. Not as much a Frozen, but it’s a good movie. I saw this after Frozen, and that might have hurt the rankings of this film. It’s never a good idea to go head to head with a major award winner! However, this film feels like a well done test of what Frozen was and brings back some classic Disney: some good songs, good acting, fun action, and nice visuals. You won’t leave the theater singing the songs like you did when you left Frozen or Mulan, but some family entertainment, it’s hard to do better! 97%
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