refreshingly "square" and straight-forward fairy tale

Rating: Null/10 (1 August 2011)

The 50th animated feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, "Tangled" is a little less flashy and a little less hectic than the average animated feature these days, hewing closer to "reality" than most such films – if one can stretch that term to include a tale of a beautiful, tower-dwelling princess whose blonde tresses glow when she sings, and whose "Prince Charming" comes in the form of a roguish thief whose face is plastered on wanted posters all over the countryside. But "Tangled" doesn't overplay its hand in the storytelling arena. There are no fire-breathing dragons, no talking animals, no over-extended action sequences (or at least no more than necessary). The focus is mainly on two attractive and likable characters coming to know and accept one another throughout the course of their adventures.
The adventure begins when Rapunzel (Mandy Moore), who has just turned eighteen, decides she wants to leave the castle in which she's been locked away by an old crone posing as her mother - it turns out Rapunzel's hair confers eternal youth on anyone who touches it - in order to experience what life is like in the outside world. Rapunzel finally gets her wish when the thief, Flynn Rider (Zachary Levi) - who's fleeing the law and the two cohorts he's just betrayed - attempts to hide in her tower, which he assumes is empty. However, he gets more than he bargained for when he meets this naïve but feisty young woman who sees him as the opportunity for escape she's been pining for all these years. So off they go to see the world, with many an unexpected adventure awaiting them along the way.
"Tangled" is a little more deliberately paced than the typical kids' flick – indeed it takes a full half-hour before we even get outside the tower room – and the scenes run a little longer than usual, as Rapunzel and Flynn take the time to establish a relationship of mutual respect and trust. The humor is gentle and the tone sweet, yet there is just the right amount of starch in the characters of the crone (nicely voiced by Donna Murphy) and Flynn's aggrieved criminal cohorts to keep things from getting too sappy. The soft-focus backgrounds provide an appropriately comfy setting for the tale, and the musical numbers (by Alan Menken and Glenn Slater) have an appealing Broadway show-tune brassiness to them that lifts the audience's spirits.
As written by Dan Fogelman and directed by Nathan Greno and Byron Howard, "Tangled" doesn't come sailing out of the wings, as so many similar recent films have done, trying to impress us with its postmodern revisionism and cynical self-awareness. It tweaks some of the elements of the classic Fairy Tale genre to be sure, but it also acknowledges and respects those elements. It really isn't in the business of tearing things down just so it can congratulate itself on its own iconoclasm and irreverence. And I, for one, am tremendously grateful for that.