Not always with the most positive of reactions from fans, historians, critics, and the world at large, Disney has a way of making classic tales uniquely their own. The talents of the Disney animators and producers are again on display with their latest feature, the 50th full length theatrical feature from Disney Animation Studios, Tangled, which hits Blu-ray and DVD tomorrow.
A retelling of the classic story of Rapunzel, Tangled features Mandy Moore voicing the role of Rapunzel and Zachary Levi as Flynn Rider, Rapunzel's knight in shining armor/prince/good guy come to rescue the damsel. Or, that's the character that Flynn turns into, initially he's in with a pretty bad crowd and something of a thief.
The film is actually told through the eyes of said thief as a flashback, with him informing everyone right up front that he will in fact perish in the piece. He opens the story by telling us the tale of how a single drop of sun once reached the Earth and caused a special flower to grow, a flower used by the evil Mother Gothel (Donna Murphy) to stay young forever. Mixing the old with the new, Rapunzel comes to be born after the king's wife falls ill and he sends men out to find the magic flower to heal the queen. Gothel takes umbrage with the procuring of the flower that was keeping her alive and upon realizing that Rapunzel's hair now has the same properties as the flower, kidnaps her and brings her to a tower to live.
As with so many a fairytale, things in Tangled rely on the highly improbable. Flynn randomly finds Rapunzel's tower on his escape from stealing the crown of the missing princess from the king and queen and happens
to do so right as Rapunzel is itching to leave the tower and discover what the lights in the sky that appear every year on her birthday are (the king and queen hold a vigil/party every year for their missing daughter). It is, in short, a preposterous confluence of events which push the story forward, but they occur, the story gets going, and the laughs and enjoyment keep on coming.
Article comments