Tangled - %

Disney's 50th Animated Feature is major tragedy. The animation quality aside, the film epitomizes all that is generic and shallow about the current studio. The plot is acceptable but the characters are cloying and obnoxious. The dialogue is some of the worst attempts at humor I've perhaps ever seen. Ever.

The central 'prince charming' is repulsive. In theory, through getting to know the princess, Flynn sheds his macho, smarmy charm and accepts his real self. We barely see any evidence of his sincere self and the oily, sociopath that he starts out as is so excessive and nauseating that it is impossible to shake through the weak resolution. It's not enough that he admits his real name is Eugene. It's not enough that he is willing to die in order to break the spell trapping his princess. It's a good turn, but the first guy we meet is so gross that there's little to engage the audience into caring about him.

The princess Rapunzel is pretty vacant and has very little personality. She's spunky in defending herself, but perhaps it's just naivety, really. She likes to paint and her best friend is a chameleon. That's it. Her naivety supposedly charms a bar full of medieval thugs in a hot second. It doesn't make sense, although it does set up the only good sequence in the film, a musical number about the dreams of ogre-like ruffians, including an odd little old man in his underwear dressed like cupid. That's so weird that it's wonderful.

And Pascal, the chameleon, is cute for sure. But how on earth does a chameleon end up in a tower in the middle of somewhere in Europe?

According to wikipedia, there are chameleons in Spain, so is this film set in Spain. It sure doesn't look like it at all. France or Germany perhaps. As opposed to a film like 'Princess and the Frog', with its embrace of a particular culture and time, 'Tangled' is a mish-mosh of fairy tale ahistorical associations. It's so vague as to be un-engaging and generic.

And the villain is the woman who kidnapped Rapunzel at an early age and raised her as her own, played by the talented, Tony-award winning, Donna Murphy.

Even though we, as the audience, know this, it's hard to want Rapunzel to hate the only person she's ever known and to want her to hate the woman she calls mother. It's too complicated psychologically for such shallow fare. And how is someone who has lived her entire life alone in a tower with three books, one window, and a chameleon so socially capable? It's an impossible leap of faith for any adult. The original Grimms Fairy Tale is dark and tortured, allowing for such leaps of faith, whereas a chipper Disney film just can't support such psychological murkiness or fantastical flights of fancy.

The animation is very impressive. The textures of fabrics and natural items like trees and leaves is very true to life. But this makes the slapstick violence and absurd physics of, for example, a man flying over a castle wall and landing on the saddle of a horse without injury too much to bear. There are just so many ridiculous slapstick head-bonks with a cast iron skillet and crotch kicks and leaping and landing without injury that I became irritated with the physical absurdity.

There is a whole sequence in which Rapunzel tries to shove the unconscious body of Flynn into a wardrobe but his floppy body keeps falling out, often on his face. He's unconscious because she's hit him in the head twice with a cast-iron skillet. Yeah. That's hilarious. I love Warner Bros. cartoons of Wile E. Coyote falling off cliffs, but the set up of emotionally connecting with the characters prevents me from giggling when they are tortured. The story doesn't need such stupidity and if these are meant to reinforce the fantastical setting, in reality they serve to push the audience out of the film with their absurdity.

It's a wreck and I sure hope no child develops their ideas of beauty, love or romance from such a crummy, poorly executed film. Bleck.