tangled (essay)

Release Date: 24 November 2010

The film that would become known as Tangled had an unusually troubled journey to the screen, as far as Disney animated features go.

It began as a film called Rapunzel, in the days when Disney had shuttered its hand-drawn animation studio and switched entirely to computer-animated features (starting with Chicken Little). Legendary Disney animator Glen Keane was put in charge of the film, and early on he voiced a desire to incorporate the best aspects of both hand-drawn and computer animation techniques. Test renderings were created in a painterly style based on that of Fragonard's The Swing, with special attention paid to Rapunzel's hair.

But while Keane was refining the animation techniques, the development of the story encountered problems. Disney wasn't happy with the progress, and at various times Keane was taken off of his producer's role; the film was reworked to become a fractured fairy tale-style story like Shrek; the film was renamed Rapunzel Unbraided; and voice actors were going on and off of the project like a revolving door. The delays even caused The Princess and the Frog—a film that hadn't yet been conceived of when Rapunzel was already deep into development—to be pushed up into Rapunzel's place in the schedule.

But eventually, a workable script came about, Keane and the animators settled on a style, and the resulting film is, while not quite a classic, still a very entertaining work and a worthy companion to Disney's stable of "princess films". (In an attempt to stave off young boys refusing to watch another such "princess film", the movie underwent one last rename, to Tangled.)

The story deviates significantly from the original fairy tale, but does so without introducing excessive pop culture elements. In the film, Rapunzel is a pretty, slight 18-year-old girl whose boundless enthusiasm is not dulled one bit by her perpetual imprisonment in a tall tower—nor by the 70 feet of uncut blonde hair that grows from her head. Her captor is Mother Gothel, an ancient crone who uses the magic of Rapunzel's hair to retain her youthful appearance. Mother knows best, Gothel insists, and Rapunzel obeys because she's the only family she's ever known.

But her real family—monarchs of a nearby kingdom—miss her terribly, and every year on her birthday launch thousands of floating paper lanterns into the sky. Rapunzel, who watches from her distant tower, doesn't know why the lights appear on her birthday each year, but she knows she wants to see them up close for once. Her opportunity arises when Flynn Rider, a charismatic thief, stumbles upon her tower while escaping the local authorities.

As she finds adventure away from her tower for the first time, Rapunzel eventually must decide whether the outside world is full of promise... or of betrayal.

Pop singer Mandy Moore voices Rapunzel with aplomb, capturing the girl's exuberance and sensitivity; Zachary Levi as Flynn does his best to keep up but might overdo the charming rogue schtick ever-so-slightly. Broadway veteran Donna Murphy is suitably scheming as Mother Gothel. A few other names—Brad Garrett, Ron Perlman, Jeffrey Tambor—voice minor characters, but there's really very little dialog beyond that of the three leads.

Returning to tradition, Disney went with Alan Menken for the songs, who teamed with Glenn Slater (as he did for Home on the Range). Not quite a full-fledged musical, the film features just four songs: one "heroine's motivation" song for Rapunzel, one villain's song for Gothel, a love song, and a rowdy show-stopper.

The film was virtually snubbed at the Oscars, not even garnering a Best Animated Feature nomination. The requisite Alan Menken love-song ballad, "I See the Light", was nominated for Best Original Song but lost to a Randy Newman piece from Toy Story 3.

Nonetheless, the film was a success and proved that computer-animated films don't have to be laden with pop-culture references or focus on non-human characters. The animation of Rapunzel's hair turned out to be a great technical breakthrough, and Disney learned a lot about combining the newest techniques with the old traditions. It may not go down as a classic, but Rapunzel still hits the mark as a worthy addition to the Disney canon.

Information for the Disney Animated Features series of nodes comes from the IMDb (www.imdb.com), Frank's Disney Page (http://www.fpx.de/fp/Disney/), Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org), and the dark recesses of my own memory.