Sweet and Witty

Rating: 6/10 (9 April 2011)

Tangled is a free adaptation of the traditional fairy-tale of Rapunzel. A fairy-tale romance and adventure movie, but also a coming of age story in which Rapunzel leaves the too-oppressive maternal womb to discover the world and herself. Follow your dream and leave your child discover the world for herself are the two main messages of the film.
The animation is terrific, very beautiful and colorful, but more eye catching than artistic I would say. However, the scene of the flying lanterns is just magical, extremely beautiful and inspiring, as well as the drawing of some of the forest backgrounds. The main human characters are great, very witty and lovable/hate-able. I found horse Maximus truly hilarious, and the chameleon very sweet wise and naughty at the same time. I loved the fact that the animals don't talk, still they have their own personality and communicate with their owners in their own way.
The cast really shines in this movie, and I loved the fact that they were not the usual superstar actors doing the dubbing. Mandy Moore is great as the very sweet, forward and naive Rapunzel. Zachary Levi is cheeky and sweet in his impersonation of the rascal outlaw Flynn Rider. However, the Oscar goes to Donna Murphy, who is brilliant in her role of villain, and she is immediately hate-able as Mother Gothel; she is the epitome of a witch, and one of the best witches ever created by Disney.
Alan Menken's score and Glenn Slater's lyric have to be praised, as they really give the movie its soul and mood. Unforgettable is the song "I have a dream", sung by a bunch of ugly looking outlaws, which has great lyrics and melody. This is one of the most lovely scenes in the film, too. Also brilliant is Gothel's song Mother knows Best, that sums up very well her selfish approach to motherhood. The singing by Moore, Levi and Murphy is great.
I found some important flaws and miss-messages in the film, that are clearly noticeable, even for a child, and that were unnecessary. The first one is the physical appearance of Rapunzel's queen mother. She looks much younger than her husband, almost his daughter, and also looks like Rapunzel's older sister, not her mother. It reflects and shameless portrays the obsession for youth of modern society regarding women. An old man does not have any problem in showing his age, his wrinkles and whitey hair, actually that makes it more respectable. On the contrary, an old woman has too look young, unwrinkled and have her hair colored to be likable as an old woman. That was very disappointing.
The second flaw in the story is the fact that, despite Rapunzel living alone, isolated, incarcerated, never putting her feet out of her tower until rescued by Flynn, she's not only able to swim but also to dive! Are we all fools or what? The third flaw is the marriage thing. The princess is rescued by the prince, but she is has turned just 18, has no experience with other humans, and less with boys, she would be almost a savage, but she is totally civilized and, even worse, she is getting married at 18! I wondered by the script changed many of the quintessential elements of Rapunzel's primitive story and did not dare to do the same with this part. They could have simply omitted Rapunzel's age, or draw her in a more womanly way (she looks like a 13 year old in the movie not a 18y.o.!) and nothing else would have mattered, as the final marriage would have made sense.
Despite the flaws, Tangled is a very entertaining, fun and sweet movie for the whole family, full of action, adventure and sense of humor.