Excitement and Amusement for All

Rating: Null/10 (3 January 2013)

Several of the early Disney feature-length cartoons ("Snow White", "Cinderella", "Sleeping Beauty") were based upon European fairy tale, and with "Tangled" the Walt Disney Animation Studios returns to this source of inspiration. Their previous animated feature "The Princess and the Frog" had also been very loosely based on a Brothers Grimm folk tale, but in that case the action had been transferred from Europe to twentieth-century America. "Tangled" is likewise only loosely based upon the original tale, but at least it keeps the traditional European setting.
The film was originally titled "Rapunzel", after the fairy tale on which it is based, but this was changed to "Tangled" shortly before its release. The change, which caused some controversy, was apparently motivated by the studio's concern that their recent animated features, with their stress on the "Disney Princesses", had only appealed to girls, and their belief that by shifting the emphasis in the title away from the leading female character they could make the film more attractive to boys. (In a similar fashion Disney's current animation project, based upon Anderson's "The Snow Queen" and to be released later this year, has been renamed "Frozen").
Despite the change of title, the film still keeps the heroine's odd- sounding name (not a normal Christian name even in German and one which I could never pronounce as a child). In this version Rapunzel lives in a secluded tower with a woman named Gothel whom she believes to be her mother. In fact, Rapunzel is the daughter of the king and queen of a nearby kingdom, and Gothel has kidnapped her in order to exploit Rapunzel's ultra-long hair which has magical properties. Gothel has forbidden her supposed "daughter" to leave the tower in which she lives, but Rapunzel yearns to explore the wider world which she has never seen, and manages to escape with the help of a young man.
I have often thought that the changing appearance of the Disney Princesses sheds an interesting light upon changing attitudes to female beauty. Snow White from the thirties, although she is supposed to be an adult woman, always looks disturbingly adolescent. Cinderella and Aurora from the fifties are both cool blondes, the first with something of the looks of Grace Kelly, the second resembling a blonde Audrey Hepburn. There were to be no princesses in the sixties and seventies, a period when the studio's cartoons were mostly about animals rather than humans, but Ariel from the eighties reverts to the innocent child-woman look popularised by some of the models and actresses of the era, such as Samantha Fox. The princesses of the nineties, the decade of the supermodel, are much more curvaceous and adult-looking, such as Pocahontas and Jasmine in "Aladdin". Tiana from "The Princess and the Frog", the first black Princess, made her appearance in the year that America's first black President took office. Rapunzel again has something of the adolescent about her, resembling a young Sarah Michelle Gellar, but then she is supposed to be only eighteen. She is, however, something of a feisty, feminist princess, the sort of girl who prefers to take the initiative rather than sit around in the hope of being rescued by a prince.
In the Grimm story, Rapunzel is indeed rescued by a prince, but here her love-interest is a handsome young commoner named Flynn Rider. Far from being royal, Flynn- presumably named after Errol- is something of a rogue; when we first meet him he is on the run after stealing the tiara of the "lost princess", as Rapunzel has become known after her disappearance. Of course, he later becomes a reformed character; indeed, the human capacity to reform oneself and become something new is a recurrent theme in the film. Rapunzel succeeds in rediscovering her true identity, rejecting the false one which has been forced on her by Gothel, and a gang of scary-looking thugs all turn out to be rather gentler than their appearance might suggest. They also have some surprising ambitions, which Rapunzel encourages them to pursue.
Disney villainesses are generally portrayed either as ugly (Cinderella's stepsisters) or as scary-looking (the Wicked Queen in "Snow White" or the Wicked Fairy in "Sleeping Beauty"), but Gothel, a pretty thirty- something, is much more normal-looking, although her brunette colouring and sharper features indicate that, contrary to what she might claim, there is no blood relationship between her and the blonde, sweet-faced Rapunzel. Gothel, in fact, despite her villainy, is generally presented as a comic figure, a neurotically and ludicrously over-protective mother, rather than a figure of pure evil. (Gothel also gets to sing the film's most memorable song, "Mother Knows Best").
The other character that stands out is Maximus, the horse belonging to the captain of the Royal Guards and an enthusiastic pursuer of evildoers, an animal counterpart to the heroes of all those "tough cop" movies. Like most Disney Princesses, Rapunzel has her own animal companion, a pet chameleon named Pascal.
My personal preference has always been for the traditional hand-drawn style of animation rather than the computer generated version. "Tangled", however, is one of the more visually attractive examples of the latter style, often with a look reminiscent of a painting; apparently the eighteenth-century French artist Jean-Honoré Fragonard was a major influence on the animators. I am not going to award this film a mark out of ten, as children's films need to be judged by different criteria to films for adults, preferably by the children themselves. I can, however, say that "Tangled" is a very enjoyable piece of family entertainment, with plenty of excitement and amusement for all.