Review: Tangled

Grade: B-

After her mother received the healing powers of a magical flower, Rapunzel was born with those same healing qualities transferred to her long blond hair. Mother Gothel was using the flower to stay young forever and when she discovers that if you cut the hair off, it turns brown and will never work again, so she decides to kidnap the baby princess and lock her away in a tall tower that is hidden in the forest forever. Almost 18 years later, a thief by the name of Flynn Rider scales the tower in an effort to find a place to hide and ends up being held captive by Rapunzel. She strikes a deal with Flynn for him to act as a guide and to take her out of the tower and travel to where the floating lights come from that she sees every year on her birthday. Along the way, Rapunzel has the greatest adventure of her life and discovers the truth about the world and herself.

Tangled is a charming and cute family movie. The animation is beautiful and the writing, for the most part, is pretty fun and entertaining. I have to admit that for making a full length kids movie about the tale of Rapunzel, the people at Disney made a pretty good movie. The movie is filled with laughs which really make the movie worth watching. It also has a ton of heart and has some very touching moments. However, there are some downsides as well. To start, it seems as though at the last second Disney decided this should be a musical so rather than writing songs it seems as though they just had the characters sing the next couple of their lines. The songs in Tangles are extremely cheesy and really are pretty bad when you get down to it. Also, there is a certain creepy factor that went along with the story for a while. You don’t find out how old Rapunzel is (about to turn 18 conveniently) until towards the end of the movie and for some reason, with that long blond hair and the way she acts, I felt as though she was maybe 14 years old, so to watch her fall in love with a man who seems to be in his mid to late twenties, and vice versa, seemed a bit weird for most of the movie.

Mandy Moore (Because I Said So, American Dreamz) does the voice of Rapunzel. Seeing as 90% of the singing in the movie is done by Rapunzel, this was pretty good casting. Moore did a pretty good job with this voice work and even though the songs were bad, her voice was really good. Zachary Levi (TVs Chuck) does the voice of Flynn Rider. Levi was very fun, funny and enjoyable in this role. He had all the right voice inflictions at all the right times. The movie also features the voices of Donna Murphy (who sings probably the worst song in the movie), Ron Perlman, M.C. Gainey, Jeffrey Tambor, Brad Garrett, Paul F. Tompkins, and more.

Tangled is a great movie for a family outing. The kids are going to love it, especially the girls, and the parents will find plenty of enjoyment as well. It is a great Disney movie that is unfortunately tainted by bad music. Thankfully the music isn’t so bad that it takes enjoyment away from the movie, but I really wish they had left it out.

Great quote: “Frying pans! Who knew, right?”