Movie Review - Tangled

Tangled

Staring: Mandy Moore, Zachary Levi, Donna Murphy, Ron Perlman, MC Gainey,Jeffrey Tambor, Brad Garrett, Paul F Tompkins, Richard Kiel and more.

Premise: Rapunzel has been wanting to see more of the world than just the inside of her tower, specifically the lights she sees flashing in the sky once a year on her birthday. Though her mother has cut derailed her desire, she can't resist once a stranger unexpectedly climbs their tower and makes it inside. This might be her one and only chance to get to see the lights up close. So she takes it.

Review: This movie was a blast! Witty, funny, exciting. And while all the speaking parts were great, the extra fun totally came from the two non-talking characters, Pascal the chameleon and Maximus the horse.

Pascal has great facial expressions and for a non-talking little creature very easily makes his emotions and opinions felt. He's like the 'heavy' in the duo of Rapunzel and her best friend.

Maximus is the ultimate horse! More like a Horse Hound as Max exhibits many traits of hunting dogs (including the urge to scratch with the back leg when someone scratches him behind the ear. Of all of Flynn's many enemies, he's the one to watch out for! lol.

There were several points about the story that surprised me. Loved watching Flynn's scheme to get Rapunzel to give up and go home so he could get what she hid from him faster and also how it totally backfired. Also Rapunzel's reactions when she first made it out of the tower were hilarious and more realistic than I expected.

The whole Mother angle was evil, insidious, and so well done! (Gave me chills, too, but for other reasons, will explain after review)

Zachary Levi and Mandy Moore have a good rapport that comes out clearly in the film. And the animation of both, especially Rapunzel's big green eyes do much for quiet moments.

I think even knowing what you've seen on the previews, you'll be surprised by all that goes on.

Of course, some of the things you may have seen in the previews never made it to the movie. Rapunzel's hair falling to hit Flynn and Maximus laughing his head off. Rapunzel's hair attacking Flynn like fists. (Could be the hair was semi self aware at that stage of development? And they decided to make it more static? Didn't lose by not having/doing it, still, I find previews that are not in the film rather annoying! lol)

Overall, totally worth it! GO see it!

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

P.S. Now for why I freaked a little watching this movie. If you've not noticed by this point I'm an author. My book "Willing Sacrifice" is about a young woman raised in isolation, supposedly for her protection (like Rapunzel), being manipulated and told things to keep her in line (like Rapunzel), stubborn to a fault (ditto), who paints to keep occupied (ditto), fascinated by the outside world (more ditto), meets a young man who's interest at first has nothing to do with the girl herself (ditto), she's faced with the realization he might not even see her as a person (oh ditto yeah), one single moment of clarity forces her to see the truth that's been veiled from her all these years. And in many ways 'Mother' resembled my Viscount. Some of their goals totally the same. It was almost like seeing my book on the screen! YES! (Except I have no cool Pascal or Maximus. Heh heh)