Patented DisneyBy John DeSando, "It's Movie Time," "Cinema Classics," and "On the Marquee"
Flynn Rider: "You smell that? It's part man-smell, and the other part is really bad man-smell, but overall it just smells like the color brown. Your thoughts?"
Tangled is not the Rapunzel story your mom grew up on. As the above quote attests, Disney has post-modernized it with updated, semi-hip dialogue and some Freudian notions that fit the story's thematic base. Disney has made a fun movie of an old fairy-tale chestnut, not as textured and layered as Princess and the Frog, but good enough to be the studio's 50th animation and going strong.
How does 26 years old Mandy Moore's voice sound like 18-year old's? It does, and I'm impressed with the whole angle of vision that emphasizes the needs of pre-teens and teens (6 year old audiences stay home!) to bolt from the nest and see the world as it is, not through parents' eyes, while promoting the value of family, real family that is.
Supposedly the visual style, an effective use of 3D, has the properties of "The Swing," a romantic painting by Jean-Honore Fragonard. Whatever, the hair of the two leads, and even wicked "mom," is textured and layered in a most realistic,yet romantically stylized fashion.
Disney is canny enough to use Rapunzel's hair as a weapon, similar to Indiana Jones's whip, to take the staid glam out of its tradition and make it useful for more than a ladder. Even the sidekick frog, to be almost as welcomed as Donkey in Shreck, has reactions reflecting the modern cynicism rather than the cute simpleton.
In its further favor, the love between the two teens is not in the Twilight longing motif?it rather grows organically from a mutual respect, not lust that is divorced from the idealized bodies Disney distractingly offers in its animations. In short, your thinking youngsters should love the ironies Tangled offers while it entertains with patented Disney humanity.
John DeSando co-hosts It's Movie Time, Cinema Classics, and On the Marquee for WCBE 90.5. The shows can be heard streaming at http://publicbroadcasting.net/wcbe/ppr/index.shtml and on demand at http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wcbe/arts.artsmain Contact him at JDeSando@Columbus.RR.com