Tangled (2010)

Tangled is the beloved story of Rapunzel...with a twist.  The classic story gets a facelift with some very impressive animation, a few dashes of adult humor and a modified storyline.  Tangled stars Mandy Moore and Zachary Levi as the two main characters with a slew of big named supporting cast members.

I have mixed emotions with this film, there was good and bad.  I felt a lot of things happened that were a bit over the top in the film, and I have never liked that in a movie.  I am talking things like Meet the Parents style over the top.  I was also unimpressed with the amount of hypocrisy in the film, I felt it could set bad examples for the younger crowd the film is geared to.

Animation was really good.  Animated movies are starting to get more and more realistic looking these days, so I was glad they were able to keep a bit of animation flair in this film.  The animation and storyline reminded me of a combination of multiple styles from movies such as Shrek, Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast.

Speaking of the storyline, I enjoyed most of it.  As I said above I felt that there were a few things throughout that seemed a bit over the top and unnecessary.  Besides those moot points however, the rest of the film was enjoyable.  There was a good amount of adult humor mixed in, and similar to Shrek it was not blatantly obvious to the younger crowds.

Tangled is a singing fairytale, similar to films such as Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast.  I thought the singing was done very well.  I most enjoyed the fact that it did not sound like your typical singing movie and the performances sounded more like they were from every day people.  A prime example is that some of the singing henchmen are Ron Perlman, Jeffrey Tambor and Brad Garett.  I am not saying they cant sing; on the contrary they did very well.  I am saying they are not professional singers.  I was happy they included performances from those people.

Interestingly enough my favorite performances were from characters that had no "words" in the film.  The performances were from Maximus the horse and Pascal the chameleon; watch the film and you will understand.

All in all Tangled was a pretty good film.  I was iffy going in from the previews, but it turned out better than I had thought it might.  This is a tough one to rate as it is bouncing between 3 and 4 stars, but I am going to give it a 4 star.  There were some very good moments in the film that outweigh the few cons that I have voiced.  Ciao for now and see you for the next review!