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.
"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.
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.
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.
Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas (2003)
Directed by Tim Johnson
influenced Tangled (2010)
Characters
Flynn Rider (Zachary Levi) is a dashing rogue, a charismatic bad boy with a more than a bit in common with DreamWorks’ Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas, though Flynn turns out to be more complicated.
It is in this way that the film makes its most definitive break with Pixar; for Tangled is not photo-realistic in the way that Pixar films tend to be, and it took a great amount of work to get the film to look as unrealistic as it is - the years of tech development that stretched the film's pre-production over a decade were largely devoted to finding new ways to give the backgrounds the texture of oil paintings - a huge step forward from the 3-D painting technology Deep Canvas that premiered to such acclaim in 1999's Tarzan - to giving the characters an impossible "glow", an internal illumination that has nothing to do with realism and everything to do with painterly nuance, to making Rapunzel's thirty yards of hair move not with fidelity to physics but out of the need to explore character and emotion.
With a serviceable script from Dan ("Cars") Fogelman, "Tangled" hits expected commercial Disney touchstones, including the heroine's cuddly, non-talking mascot, a chameleon named Pascal, perfect as a toy for holiday giving.
Instead of the bland handsome prince of the story -- always a ho-hum character in fairy tales -- screenwriter Dan Fogelman ("Cars," "Bolt") has come up with a reckless rapscallion, Flynn Rider, a merry thief who snatches the missing princess' tiara and inadvertently returns it to its true owner as he flees the palace guards.
Tangled was written by Dan Fogelman (co-writer on Disney's Bolt and Pixar's Cars), and co-directed by Nathan Greno (his first feature film) and Byron Howard (who co-directed Bolt).
Byron Howard (Bolt) and Nathan Greno do well to keep the story tight with the help of screenwriter Dan Fogelman (Bolt, Cars), who gives us witty dialogue to bring Rapunzel into the 21st century amid the medieval setting.
It comes from the previously groan-inducing makers of the instantly forgettable Bolt (directors Nathan Greno and Byron Howard) and from the fingers of Dan Fogelman, whose Cars for Pixar was lightweight and whose Fred Claus was downright execrable.
That's what writer Dan Fogelman ("Cars," "Bolt") did in "Tangled," which is based on the Brothers Grimm tale of "Rapunzel."