Nathan Greno
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“Tangled” is a lively, funny, deft and delicious musical in the vein of Disney’s 1989 classic “The Little Mermaid.”
"Tangled" is reminiscent of the successful run of movies Disney made in the early 1990s and would fit right in with those films which included "Beauty and the Beast," "The Little Mermaid" and "The Lion King."
While the music - by Alan Menken and Glenn Slater - are engaging and move the plot along, they don't stick in your consciousness like "Beauty and the Beast" and "The Little Mermaid," Menken's classic collaborations with the late Howard Ashman.
The fact that Alan Menken (The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast) wrote all the tunes makes it feel like it’s 1990 all over again, albeit with computer-generated, rather than hand-drawn animation.
It's not to the level of modern classics like Aladdin (1992) or The Little Mermaid (1989) and of course it shouldn't be compared to classic classics such as Dumbo (1941) and Lady and the Tramp (1955), but for 2010?
Headed by Chris Buck (2007's " Surf's Up ") and Jennifer Lee (writer of 2012's " Wreck-It Ralph ," making her directorial debut), "Frozen" reminds, if doesn't quite match, 2010's glorious "Rapunzel"-inspired " Tangled ," right down to its fairy tale inspiration and delicious musical leanings.
Its songs, too, are wonderful, echoing Disney’s 2010 hit, “Tangled.”
Following closely in the footsteps of 2010’s Tangled, right down to the fraught family relationship, the character design, and the oversized quadruped who acts like a puppy, Frozen hits many of the same beats, and finds some of the same freshness in a complicated family dynamic.
…though at times I felt as if I were watching a Tangled adaptation rather than Snow White…
…a less roguish version of Tangled’s Flynn Ryder…
…envisioned as a cross between skilled thief Flynn Ryder from Tangled and Robin Hood…
…a rowdy rascal who’s almost a sibling to Ryder from TANGLED…
…like the similar male rogues found in Disney’s TANGLED and FROZEN cartoon features.
Jonathan is reminiscent of the likable rogue Flynn from Disney’s “Tangled.” And, like Flynn and Rapunzel, Jonathan and Snow start out bantering and bickering before the rom-com realizations set in.
"Tangled" is reminiscent of the successful run of movies Disney made in the early 1990s and would fit right in with those films which included "Beauty and the Beast," "The Little Mermaid" and "The Lion King."
It's astonishing to think that Tangled is Disney's first traditional fairy tale since 1991's Beauty and the Beast .
The fact that Alan Menken (The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast) wrote all the tunes makes it feel like it’s 1990 all over again, albeit with computer-generated, rather than hand-drawn animation.
…so that it stops their interest in remaking Tangled again…
…an era beginning roughly with “The Princess and the Frog” or “Tangled”…
Weeks after the subdued debut, Disney paused development on its planned live-action Tangled.
It’s also difficult to recall a computer-generated animated film that has so successfully managed to evoke the feel of hand-drawn animation without sacrificing the eye-popping visuals that CGI has become known for, which ensures that Tangled instantly joins the ranks of such beloved animation classics as The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
The final confrontation between her and Rapunzel is quite breathtaking - visually and with Menken's score - and reminiscent of the Queen's demise in Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs .
One supposes that a sense of rising to an occasion, of wanting/trying to make the 50th animated feature in its way as exciting and engaging and groundbreaking as its first (that would have been a little thing called " Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs " back in 1937) also occurred to the production team at one point.
Move over, "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," "Sleeping Beauty," "The Little Mermaid," "Beauty and the Beast," and "The Lion King."
Nearly 30 years later, “Moana” follows “Tangled” and “Frozen” in a newer wave of cleverly refurbished fairy tales, reinventing the company line with CG animation, self-referential humor, slyly feminist attitudes and other contemporary amenities.
Move over, “Frozen;” not since 2010’s “Tangled” has Disney made such a refreshing tribute to the human spirit.
More than “Tangled,” more than “Frozen,” “Moana” keeps with the tradition that made Disney the leader in animated fairy and folk tales, and yet, showing a thoroughly modern touch, it’s the first to do so without so much as suggesting a love interest.
(I’m thinking specifically of the generic styles of Tangled and Frozen – movies you could swap shots between without noticing.)
“Tangled,” about a rebellious Rapunzel, was an early attempt in 2010, but it was “Frozen” (2013) that turned girl power into box-office gold and topped the Billboard charts with the hear-me-roar anthem “Let It Go.”
Rapunzel escaped her tower in “Tangled” so she could see a lantern festival; Anna tried to prevent her sister from icing their kingdom in “Frozen”; and now the title character in “Moana” has to save her people and her island from death and destruction.
It's not to the level of modern classics like Aladdin (1992) or The Little Mermaid (1989) and of course it shouldn't be compared to classic classics such as Dumbo (1941) and Lady and the Tramp (1955), but for 2010?
Flynn Ryder and the company he keeps bear a lot of resemblance to "Beauty and the Beast's" Gaston while Mother Gothel is much like Snow White's evil Queen and of course there are animal side kicks and plenty of generic songs by Alan Menken ("Home on the Range," "Enchanted").
Unlike last year’s The Princess and the Frog, where Disney stuck to its traditional hand-drawn animation and storytelling formula, Tangled takes all the familiar elements of the “princess movies” (think The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin) and combines them with Disney’s application of new technology -- CGI and 3D.
But in spite of its pedigree, Tangled doesn’t come across as a traditional Disney film, certainly not in the spirit of 2009’s conscious old-school throwback The Princess And The Frog .
In 2009 there was the lovely, hopeful Tiana in The Princess and the Frog, and now there's another fairy tale heroine who's worthy of adoration: Tangled's Rapunzel.
But their fiftieth animated feature as a solo studio continues the re-emergence of the romantic fable after 2009’s The Princess and the Frog , and marks a return to the big tales that guarantee big success.
Like the traditionally animated The Princess and the Frog (2009), Tangled returns to the older style of Disney storytelling that incorporates musical numbers into the narrative.
Facilier from The Princess and the Frog , Mother Gothel wants to preserve—not destroy—our protagonist.
There is a good villain entry with "Mother Knows Best," sung by two-time Tony Award-winning Donna Murphy ("The King and I" and "Passion").
Blaming the "outdated" media for their failures, they rebooted their animation department, which then produced the computer animated zany comedy Chicken Little (2005) -- fairly successful, but not in the league of the more successful Pixar and DreamWorks releases.
The journey is the thing in a setup like this, which is eerily reminiscent of DreamWorks’ excellent, supremely underrated The Road to El Dorado in both wit and the fluid animation, and Greno, Howard and Fogelman deliver at every turn.
Raya and the Last Dragon (2021)
Directed by Carlos López Estrada
influenced by Tangled (2010)
Themes
Ever since Disney overhauled its princess archetype in 2010’s Tangled with an agency-seizing Rapunzel, the evolution of its revolutionary heroines has continued — from Frozen ’s convention-bucking royal sisters Elsa and Anna, to seafaring voyager Moana.
That nixed a planned redo of TANGLED…
The basic beats of Flynn and Rapunzel's journey are familiar from sources as varied as Aladdin and It Happened One Night, as the two encounter some strange characters on the road, get into a bit of trouble and inevitably fall in love before reaching their destination (in this case, seeing the floating paper lanterns that mysteriously show up each year on Rapunzel's birthday).
A closer cousin to 2012's rainbow-hued adventure " Wreck-It Ralph " than to the superior fairy-tale musical stylings of 2010's " Tangled " and 2013's " Frozen ," this affectionate yarn of a troubled young boy and his unlikely buddythink "E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial" with a robot in place of an alienhas a huge heart, visual wonder to spare, and a script that could have perhaps used a few pre-production tweaks.
An early song performed by Broadway diva Donna Murphy, "Mother Knows Best," calls to mind Frollo's lyrics in Disney's greatest achievement, The Hunchback of Notre Dame: "The world is cruel/the world is wicked/it's I alone whom you can trust in this whole city/I am your only friend…"
Dan Fogelman, writer, director and executive producer of the aforementioned NBC drama series, has taken his slick and soapy sensibilities back the the big screen where he came from (wrote animated features including Cars , Cars 2 , Tangled , Bolt and the live action Me and Earl and the Dying Girl , among others) to make the film Life Itself , and the results are jaw dropping.
Fogelman is no stranger to the big screen, having written movies like Crazy Stupid Love and the animated Cars and Tangled and writing and directing star vehicles like Danny Collins with Al Pacino and The Guilt Trip with Barbra Streisand.
Writer/director Dan Fogelman ( Tangled , Crazy Stupid Love ) has delivered a massive star-studded melodrama that’s relentlessly cruel, unbelievably cloying, unabashedly sentimental and frustratingly facile.
The creator of This is Us has a generally good track record for putting out good stuff (Tangled and the short-lived Galavant, RIP, being examples).
Writer/director Dan Fogelman is the creator of NBC’s “This Is Us,” as well as a credited writer of such films as Cars, Tangled, and Crazy Stupid Love, all wonderful movies.
While Disney may have played around with self-irony in the past (the woefully underappreciated The Emperor’s New Groove ), Tangled comes from a place unaccustomed to artificiality and spoofing.