Monday, September 05, 2011

Review: Tangled


Tangled

Starring
Mandy Moore, Zachary Levi, Donna Murph

Runtime 100 minutes

Tangled is a CGI masterpeice from Disney Studios. It is also their 50th animated feature length movie. Tangled is for all intents a loosely based retelling ot the German fairy tale "Rapunzel" by the Brothers Grimm.

The plot really doesn’t take any chances. The king’s wife is ill. It is known that there is a flower in the kingdom that has great curative properties. So the king sends out to his subjects that the flower must be found. The flower however is jealously hoarded by Gothel who uses it to keep herself young for years. However the flower is found and it is used to cure the queen. It comes to pass that the sovereigns are gifted with a baby girl with shockingly golden hair. Gothel not to be robbed of what she feels is hers alone comes to the child’s bedside to steal the hair from the child, knowing that it must have the same properties as the flower because they were both bright and gold as the sun. Upon cutting a lock the hair changes from golden to brown and loses all magical properties. Seeing this Gothel kidnaps the baby Rapunzel and sequesters her in a tall tower where she never leaves. Gothel never allows her to cut her hair and uses it as she used the flower to stay young.

From here the plot progresses to her meeting a young thief who she bribes into escorting her to the city to see the lights that appear only on her birthday. The thief is pretty much standard Disney fair. A bit of mild bad boy with a good heart. And of course he is being chased and of course he is betrayed and of course she is lead to believe that he cares not for her. Which of course does a 180 in the movie as needed. Of course there are no loose ends, everybody get what they secretly want and the evil people are eliminated in the most bloodless way possible. Happy happy happy.

As much as I would love to trash this movie I can’t. Disney shows that it can still compete and do it strikingly well against the other large animation houses. This feature set a new standard and holds some records in CGI. Rapunzel’s hair has 10,000 separate pieces of animation. The movie holds a record for the largest cgi crowd scene at 3000 different cgi actors. The much talked about Chinese lantern scene contains a stunning 45,000 animated floating lanterns! The lighting as well as the texture mapping are a feast for the eyes.

So all in all the movie may not take any chances, it is endearing in its own right. Plus the added benefit of high quality animation only adds to the enjoyment. Over all I would give the movie an 8 losing only to a plain vanilla plot. The extras are pretty much non existent. Mandy Moore, and Zachary Levi, spend a few moments giving you a run down on what makes the movie special, there are some out takes and that is about it so extras are a 5, which pulls the movie down lower that it deserves so I will give it an overall 7. Remember I am rating a dvd/blu-ray which is supposed to be better for graphics and the amount of data they can cram. That being said the movie is good simplistic fare, but don't waste your time on the extras.

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