BEFORE: Another Disney fairy-tale from recent years - and I'm betting on it being a love story, too, right? Linking from "The Princess and the Frog", where voice actor Jim Cummings appeared as Ray - he also did a voice in "Titan A.E." with Ron Perlman (last seen in "Looney Tunes: Back in Action"), who appears again tonight. It's not pretty, but it will work.
The TCM Road-Trip, Day 3: Today the trip finishes off Mexico ("Night of the Iguana" - pass), then moves on to Colorado for "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" and "The Glenn Miller Story" (not sure I see the Colorado connection there...) before going WAY overseas to India. Now we're getting somewhere! I really should watch "Gandhi", and I will someday, but to record it tonight, I'd need a third DVR, so I've got to pass. But I will pick up "A Passage to India", since I've seen so few of the Merchant-Ivory productions over the years. And there's a movie coming up in 10 days that I want to pair it with.
THE PLOT: The magically long-haired Rapunzel has spent her entire life in a tower, but now that a runaway thief has stumbled upon her, she is about to discover the world for the first time.
AFTER: Like last night's film, this is an expanded version of a rather simple fairy-tale. Rapunzel's locked in a tower, right. But WHY is she there? Again, I forgot to inquire further when I was a child, so Disney's added a proper back-story, borrowing a little from "Law & Order: SVU". Due to some unique childbirth circumstances, her hair received the healing properties of a magic flower (work with me, here...) and so an evil sorceress (?) baby-napped her and raised her as her own child, using her hair's power to remain young.
Fast-forward 18 years to where Rapunzel is living the ultimate sheltered life, not permitted to leave her tower, into the large allegedly scary world that her demeaning mother figure is "protecting" her from. And here I thought my Mom put the "mother" in "smother", because she wouldn't let me play organized sports as a kid. Apparently this would have caused me to break my arm, or worse, my glasses...but I digress.
I thought it was very shrewd of Disney Corp. to try and appeal to both boys and girls, first by changing the name of the story ("Tangled" sounds rougher, more complicated), then locking in the girls with the princess' hopey-dreamy-wishey stuff, and adding the thieves and thugs and action sequences to rope in the boys. It's almost like people over there know what they're doing.
The songs here are a little show-tuney, but they're not terrible. There were some very clever rhymes, particularly in "Mother Knows Best" and "I've Got a Dream".
Any NITPICK POINTS would probably concern the ever-varying length of Rapunzel's hair - portable in some shots, but impossibly cumbersome in others - plus it functions in more ways than Indiana Jones' bullwhip. But with Rapunzel sliding down from the tower on her own hair - correct me if my physics are wrong, but I don't see how she can function as both the pulley AND the rope at the same time, especially with no counterweight.
Starring the voices of Mandy Moore (last heard in "Racing Stripes"), Zachary Levi (last seen in "Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel"), Donna Murphy (last seen in "The Fountain"), with cameos from Jeffrey Tambor (last seen in "Meet Joe Black"), Brad Garrett (last heard in "A Bug's Life"), Paul F. Tompkins and M.C. Gainey.
RATING: 7 out of 10 Wanted posters
Re: "The Glenn Miller Story" -- Glenn Miller went to the University of Colorado in Boulder and met his future wife. And there's yer Colorado link to "The Unsinkable Molly Brown."
ReplyDelete(I was channel surfing and stopped dead on this movie a couple of months ago. "Hey," I thought. "That's the bridge from Macky Auditorium over the lagoon to the little courtyard-ey area that leads to the corner with the nice coffeeshop and the Mac store!")
Oh, and it's certainly possible to hoist yourself up via a rope that passes through a pulley overhead and is clipped to your waist. No Disney Magic required.
A person may be able to hoist themselves up with a rope and no counterweight - but that's not the situation I was objecting to.
DeleteIn one instance, Rapunzel slides down her own hair, as one would slide down a fire pole. However, on the far, far other end, the hair is connected to her own head.
SO, the hair needs to be moving (since she is), however it appears to be stuck in place, as she is sliding down it. Since no one has hair of this length, it's impossible to test whether this is possible or not.
My hunch is that it's not, because the hair should act like a rope, not a firepole. The hair can't be the rope, the pulley (fulcrum) and moving (or not moving) in a way that Rapunzel is not.
But again, it's been a long time since physics class.