Tangled

“Happy Turkey Day, yall! This year is pretty low key for me. I’ve just kinda thrown together a ghetto dinner of various instant or no hassel Thanksgiving faves. My real fun is gonna be tomorrow when I drag my BFF around town before sunrise for my favorite shopping day of the year. But there is one Turkey Day tradition for me that I try to keep when possible: a movie matinee in pajamas. This year, the flick was Tangled.

I \m/ loved it. That was Disney magic at its finest. From the first few minutes of backstory, narrated by the wonderful Zachary Levi (more on him later!) I felt like I was five years old again, under the usual spell of that magical house of mouse. My first impressions when I’d heard there was a Rapunzel movie in the works were 1) yeah duh, she’s one of the few major fairy tale princesses to be Disney-fied B) how exactly are they gonna expand out the story? Then there was all the talk flying around about how they were gonna try making this one a bit more boy friendly. Not entirely sure how well they succeeded in that (still felt like a princess movie to me, not complaining though) but overall they pulled the whole thing off beautifully.

Not sure where to start. Partly because I cracked open the growler of pumpkin ale I’ve had sitting around since BYOP and its starting to go to my head. Yum. Characters. That’s a good place. Chick first. I love that lately the princesses have been a bit more kick ass than they were back in the day. Rapunzel had a great balance of tough cookie and delicate flower. And I thought Mandy Moore did a great job with her. I hadnt been too sure about that casting decision when I first heard about, but it all made sense to me the moment she first opened her mouth to sing. She just brought such a sweet innocense to the role that was perfect.

Speaking of perfection…Zachary Levi as Flynn Ryder. Loved. Him. Great combo of confidence, flair, and playfulness. Definitely one of those instances where you could hear how much fun he was having, and it adds such a wonderful dynamic to the film. Also, prolly the hottest animated Disney prince type after Aladdin and Prince Eric. Especially loved that they nailed Levi’s eyes. Had to keep reminding myself that Flynn was just a cartoon, and strangely felt like I was cheating on Aladdin.

Before this conversation goes into really weird territory, lets stick with talking about the animation. It was absolutely gorgeous. I remember a few years back what a breakthrough it was when Monsters Inc was the first to crack the formula for animating hair, and now we’ve got a CGI movie where someone’s hair is essentially another character in and of itself. Besides that, the colors were just so lively and vibrant and the picture such gorgeous quality. Really looking forward to bringing it home on my Blu-Ray. The latern thing in particular was amazing, both from a storytelling P.O.V and visually.

The music wasn’t as strong as some other Disney classics, but given that I wasn’t even expecting any I’ll still put that in the win column. The bad guys’ song alone makes it all worthwhile.

Overall, such fun. Its exactly the type of movie I love to see on Turkey Day. Funny how I usually end up seeing a kiddie movie (Enchanted back in ’07) or an action movie (Casino Royale the year before that). There’s a lot of debate right now over which film is gonna get the third spot in the Academy Award nods for animated feature this time around (Toy Story 3 and How to Train Your Dragon should be locks for the first 2). I’d just like to take this moment to throw my support behind Tangled. I’d certainly rank it above its other competition (Despicable Me, Megamind)

Tangled – \m/ \m/ \m/ \m/

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *