Week 6: Tangled
Directed by Nathan Greno & Byron Howard
100 minutes
2011
30th October, Sunday. Pleasance Theatre.
You can be forgiven if you missed Tangled in the cinema, but hopefully you will right this wrong and check out the 50th film by Walt Disney as it is bound to delight.
The revised version of Rapunzel (Mandy Moore) has her as the baby of a King and Queen that gets kidnapped by Gothel, an old woman (Donna Murphy) who stows her away in a tower all in order to harvest the magical powers her long golden hair provides; the magic of youth.
As she grows up, Rapunzel is content with her isolation believing her kidnapper is her mother and that she is not allowed to leave the tower because the world in a dangerous place and she must stay safe. But when Rapunzel nears her eighteenth birthday her one wish is to travel to the nearby castle to witness the spectacular lanterns that float into the sky every year perfectly coinciding with her birthday. Of course Gothel will not allow this and so Rapunzel changes her wish and asks Gothel to give her these specific paints as a birthday present, that require Gothel to go away for several days to acquire the materials to make it, that should be enough time to sneak away and see the lights…
As timing would have it, a dashing thief named Flynn Rider (Zachary Levi) is making an escape from accomplices and stumbles across Rapunzel’s tower, our feisty heroine knocks the stranger out and sensing his urgency blackmails him into being her tour guide to the castle to see the lights to which he agrees. Of course then, Gothel finds out that Rapunzel has left the tower and is hell-bent on finding her.
Great amusement and surprising action, Tangled is a joyful watch. Packed with excellent characters and superb animation you might just show it the same amount of affection you did for the classic Disney of your youth.
Written by Raymah Tariq