Poor plot, but a return to form for Disney

Rating: Null/10 (15 March 2012)

"The one thing that the public dislike is novelty. Any attempt to extend the subject-matter of art is extremely distasteful to the public; and yet the vitality and progress of art depends largely upon the continual extension of subject-matter. The public dislike novelty because they are afraid of it. It represents to them a mode of Individualism, an assertion on the part of the artist that he selects his own subject, and treats it as he chooses." - Oscar Wilde
"Believe in the character. Animate with sincerity." - Glen Keane
As Pixar becomes evil, Dreamworks and Disney's animated features seem to get better. "Tangled", based on the German fairy tale "Rapunzel", is perhaps the studio's best animated film since "Bolt", though both are still far too manic, the products of a popular culture that has been reduced to an Eternal Now, where noisy, shallow entertainments constantly give way to replacements that are only superficially distinguishable from their predecessors. Disney, and all of modern culture, works hard to create an audience that values artificial newness and not much more.
This kind of creepy replication is at the heart of "Tangled", a film which sees a cute princess, Rapunzel, kept in a constant limbo so that an evil witch may be rejuvenated over and over and over again. Rapunzel and her handsome prince's willingness to stick to formula, to remain frozen in character, is what enriches the witch, her body growing like some kind of bulbous, perpetually expanding Disney bank account. It's only when Rapunzel and her man break away from their roles – she transforms from hermit to princess, he from bandit to prince (itself formula) – that the cycle is destroyed.
The plot's mostly junk, but aesthetically this is an exquisite, gorgeous looking film. The man responsible for this is master animator Glen Keane, who has little to no prior experience with computer animation. The result is that "Tangled" uses no motion capturing and has a visual style that hearkens back to Disney classics of yesteryear. Disliking the "sharp", "straight" look of computer animation, Keane issued a mandate for soft, round edges, organic looking movements, and warm hand drawings whose lines and colours resemble that of traditional oil paintings on canvas. Beyond this, the film treat us to richly rendered forests, super expressive characters, an eye-popping colour palette, whispery light effects, and sexy greens, pinks, blues and whites. The film's character animations are themselves very good, particular an odd horse that behaves like a bloodhound, moves like a laser beam and seems designed to mimic the upper body of a chess piece. The human characters are a delight too; visually it's a good film.
"Tangled" was the first Disney fairy-tale since "Beauty and the Beast", which was released way back in 1991. Since those straight faced, earlier Disney films, Disney has slipped into the grip of post-modernity. It's princes and princesses now know that they're "princes" and "princesses ", constantly indulging in sarcastic, ironic, pop-culture referencing winks. Thankfully "Tangled" does go too overboard with this, and when it does the gags and jokes mostly work well, as do some of its parody's of modern Broadway tunes. And as with most computer animated films, the virtual camera work here is super fine-tuned, everything ultra choreographed, which lends both the film's action sequences and exposition a special visual kick. All this comes at a cost: 260 million dollars for this baby, roughly three times higher than your average Pixar budget.
This being Disney, the film is overtly sexual, with phallic towers, sexually manipulative women, fertile valleys, wide eyed couples and strong, sexual currents. And as with most modern Disney films, which get increasingly self-referential ("Bolt" was itself rife with films within films), there's an unintentional meta-plot going on, our animators' love aligned to Rapunzel's love of 2d drawing, of art, which escapes its prison and bursts into a 3d fantasy world of criss crossing spatial axes. Incidentally, Disney's previous "princess film" was "The Princess and the Frog", an offencive little Obama-era film about a "black princess". In comparison, "Tangled" is hyper white. Like brushing your teeth with bleach while the KKK eats mayonnaise on your lawn. Only whiter.
8/10 – Worth two viewings.