Review: Tangled

WARNING: This review contains spoilers. And I need them spoilers to make a friggin' point. In fact, I think this whole review makes more sense to people who have already seen the movie.

After doing Beauty and the Beast, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Alice in Wonderland, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and The Little Mermaid, you'd think that Disney has already made a cartoon out of every popular female figure in fairy tales. That is until Tangled came out and you realize that they haven't done Rapunzel yet.

If you're familiar with the original Rapunzel story, and if you've seen a lot of Disney films, you know how this goes down -- girl with very long hair is stuck in a tower (with no ladder, stairs or elevator) thanks to the story's antagonist, prince charming comes along, they fall in love, he saves her from the villain and they live happily ever after. Girl gets boy. Boy gets girl. Pretty typical huh?

Got no problem with this tried-and-tested formula. And since Disney has been modifying fairy tales since time immemorial, which are originally morbid by the way, in order to cater to young audiences and their target market, Tangled not being loyal to the original Rapunzel doesn't bother me either. But what bothers me is the abundance of things that don't make sense.

Okay, let's start with Tangled's first scenes. Gothel, the film's main antagonist, is keeping a flower with accelerated healing properties which she uses to keep herself young. Unfortunately for her, the king needed this flower to cure his ailing queen. Not knowing that somebody owns the miraculous plant, the king's men picked the flower and delivers it to his highness. After recovering from her illness, the queen gives birth to Rapunzel. Since the queen consumed the healing flower, she transferred some of its powers to Rapunzel. Gothel, who at this point is now an old geezer, obviously wants her flower back. So she infiltrated the heavily guarded castle to initially cut off a strand of Rapuzel's hair, but eventually kidnapped the little girl so she can regain her fountain of youth.

That was pretty lengthy. Now go over the second to the last sentence again and tell me there's nothing wrong with that. An old woman infiltrating a heavily guarded castle? WTF? You gotta be kidding me! How in the world did she manage to climb up walls and roofs with those brittle bones? And even if she was strong enough to become a cat burglar ala Catherine Zeta Jones in Entrapment, what the hell were those palace guards doing? With such pathetic security measures, no wonder Flynn Rider, Rapunzel's love interest, managed to steal a crown right under their noses.

Flynn Rider: boyfriend material

I'm also having problems understanding the part where Rapunzel had an epiphany about her childhood. After going off to an adventure with Rider, we see Rapunzel back in Gothel's tower. During her alone time, she reached for a clothing that bears the kingdom's symbol and all of sudden she figures everything out -- she starts seeing suns which she subconsciously placed in her drawings, and had a vision about her parents, the king and queen. The kingdom's symbol gave it away? Really? And even with the absence of substantial proof that she's related to the royal family, she jumped to the conclusion that she's the missing princess because some vision told her so? But a vision could mean anything. And while we're at it, are premonitions also bestowed by the miracle flower? Some flower it must be if it can grant more powers than cosmic rays could. Are they sure it's a flower and not some Devil Fruit like the ones they have in the One Piece universe?

And there's Pascal, the chameleon. Nothing wrong with him, save for the fact that he murdered Gothel. I'd let him get away with tripping the antagonist to her death if it wasn't intentional. But when he saw Gothel coming his way, he didn't bother moving anywhere and instead, extended his tail to result into the demise of the story's villain. What kind of message are we sending here? That it's okay to murder people? Besides, what did Gothel ever do to Rapunzel? Kidnapping and lying aside, she treated the long-haired blondie like her own child. Does she deserve to get killed for that?

After dispatching Gothel, Rider took Rapunzel to her parents, and this is where the film just lost all sense of logic. Before going to the castle, Rider trimmed Rapunzel's hair causing it to lose its magic and turn brown. And even after years of not seeing Rapunzel, the king and queen was able to recognize their full grown daughter with brown hair, who by the way, was an infant and had blonde hair when she was abducted by Gothel. Sure, Rapunzel and her mom had the same hair color, but brown isn't exactly a rare hair color in their universe. So without any proof of relation -- no document, artifact, password, song, heck, not even a friggin' birthmark -- how on earth did the king and queen know that Rapunzel was their daughter? Instinct? You may think I'm overreacting, but if you hear a toddler asking a similar question, which I did, then there's a problem with your story.

And that's not the worst part. Somewhere in the middle of the movie, Rider and Rapunzel came across a bunch of thugs who had different kinds of dreams (one wants to be a piano player, one wants to be a mime, etc.), and before the movie ends, they get to live their dreams, just like that. No if-you-try-hard-enough-your-dreams-will-come-true lines. Just straight up if you dream about it, it'll eventually come true. Again, what kind of message are we sending here?

And did I mention that the 3D isn't exactly outstanding? Sure it looks good, but I've seen better.

If you'll look past the plotholes I pointed out, or make fun of them, you'll enjoy this movie. If you can't, you'll most likely end up writing a review about it. Tangled's got romance, action, witty animals and some humor here and there. Yes, a Disney movie for Rapunzel is long overdue. But for all the time it took to be made, I was expecting something better.