Tangled (2010) Review

The Film That Brought Disney Back

Tangled is the film where Disney remembered how to make a fairy tale musical. The studio had spent most of the 2000s losing ground to Pixar and DreamWorks, and its traditional princess stories looked old-fashioned next to Shrek. Tangled took the Rapunzel story, told it in computer animation with the warmth of the hand-drawn classics, and found a tone that was funny, romantic and a little bit dangerous all at once.

Nathan Greno and Byron Howard directed it. Released in November 2010, it was Disney’s fiftieth animated feature. It was a major hit, and it led directly to Frozen three years later. I give it a 9. It’s the best Disney princess film since Beauty and the Beast, and the lantern scene belongs among the studio’s finest moments.

A Girl in a Tower

Rapunzel has spent eighteen years in a tower hidden in the woods, raised by the woman she believes is her mother. Every year on her birthday, thousands of floating lanterns rise into the sky over the distant kingdom, and she longs to see them up close. She doesn’t know that she’s the kingdom’s lost princess, stolen as a baby. The lanterns are released every year by her grieving parents in the hope she’ll come home.

Mandy Moore voices her with an eager, restless energy that makes her immediately likeable. This Rapunzel isn’t waiting passively to be rescued. She paints every wall of her tower, reads the same books over and over, cooks, plays chess with her chameleon and makes plans. She’s desperate to see the world, and she’s terrified of it, because the only person she has ever known has told her the world is full of monsters.

The first scenes establish her life in the tower with a song about her daily routine, and it’s both funny and sad. She’s filled every hour of every day, and none of it is enough. The tower is comfortable, colorful and safe, and it’s still a prison.

Mother Gothel

The villain is Mother Gothel, voiced by Donna Murphy, and she ranks with Disney’s finest and most unsettling villains. Gothel stole Rapunzel as a baby because her hair has the power to heal and keep Gothel young. She isn’t a witch in a castle. She’s a mother figure who keeps her daughter prisoner through love, guilt and fear, and the film understands exactly how that kind of control works.

Her song, Mother Knows Best, is a masterpiece of manipulation. She teases Rapunzel, mocks her, hugs her, frightens her and tells her she’s too naive to survive outside, all in the same breath, and every line lands as both affection and threat. Murphy, a Broadway star, sings it with theatrical relish, and it’s the most chilling number in any modern Disney film.

What makes Gothel frightening is that she’s so recognizable. Many viewers have met a parent, partner or friend who controls through affection and undermining, and the film captures the pattern precisely: the backhanded compliments, the constant reminders of danger and the rewards for obedience.

Flynn Rider

Rapunzel’s way out arrives through her window. Flynn Rider, a charming, vain thief on the run from the palace guards with a stolen crown, climbs into the tower to hide. Rapunzel knocks him out with a frying pan, ties him up and makes a deal: he’ll take her to see the lanterns, and she’ll give him back the crown.

Zachary Levi voices Flynn with a quick, self-mocking charm, and few male leads in any Disney film are as good. He’s funny, conceited and secretly insecure, and his real name, Eugene Fitzherbert, turns out to belong to an orphan who invented a heroic persona because he never felt good enough as himself. His arc from con man to devoted partner is handled with real care.

The chemistry between Rapunzel and Flynn carries the film. They bicker, tease and gradually trust each other, and their romance feels earned because it grows out of shared adventure and frank conversation, not love at first sight.

Maximus and Pascal

The film’s two animal sidekicks don’t speak, and they steal every scene they’re in. Maximus is the palace guard’s horse, a proud, relentless tracker who behaves exactly like a determined police dog, sniffing the ground and refusing to give up the chase. His running battle with Flynn, and his gradual, grudging friendship with Rapunzel, is one of the film’s best comic threads.

Pascal is Rapunzel’s pet chameleon, who changes color to show his feelings and is her silent confidant. He’s small, expressive and fiercely loyal, and his reactions provide many of the film’s funniest moments. Neither character needs a single line of dialogue, and neither ever feels like a toy designed to be sold, and both prove that physical comedy is still among animation’s great strengths.

Maximus in particular gives the film its best action. His sword fight with Flynn, the horse holding a sword in his teeth and Flynn wielding a frying pan, is a gem of comic choreography, and it ends in a truce brokered by Rapunzel that neither of them quite trusts.

The Snuggly Duckling

On the road to the kingdom, Flynn takes Rapunzel to a tavern called the Snuggly Duckling, hoping the brutal thugs inside will frighten her into going home. Instead, she wins them over, and each of them reveals a secret dream: one wants to be a concert pianist, another collects ceramic unicorns, and a third longs to find true love.

The song, I’ve Got a Dream, is a joyful, silly number, and it turns a room full of scowling villains into a chorus of dreamers. It’s also a clever expression of the film’s central idea: people are rarely what they look like, and everyone deserves the chance to chase what they want. The thugs later return to help rescue Flynn, and their loyalty is one of the film’s warmest touches.

It’s also the scene where Rapunzel first discovers that she’s good with people. She has spent her whole life with one person who told her she was helpless, and in a room full of criminals she turns out to be brave, persuasive and kind. It’s the first crack in everything Gothel taught her, and the film lets it happen through a song about pianos and unicorns.

The Lanterns

The film’s most famous sequence takes place on a boat on the lake below the castle, on Rapunzel’s birthday. Flynn has brought her to see the lanterns, and as night falls, thousands of them rise from the kingdom and drift across the water around the boat, golden and glowing, reflected in the lake below.

Disney has produced few sequences as beautiful. The animators built thousands of individually lit lanterns and a shimmering reflection effect, and the result feels like a painting come to life. Rapunzel and Flynn sing I See the Light, by Alan Menken and Glenn Slater, and the song was nominated for the Academy Award.

The scene works because the whole film has been building to it. Rapunzel has dreamed of this moment for eighteen years, and when it arrives, it’s even more beautiful than she imagined, and she’s sharing it with someone she’s come to love. Very few moments in animation deliver on their promise so completely.

Seventy Feet of Hair

Tangled took years to develop and became, at the time, one of the most expensive animated films ever made, with a budget widely reported at around two hundred and sixty million dollars. The legendary animator Glen Keane was originally set to direct and stepped back after a heart attack, staying on as a supervising animator and mentor to the team.

Keane wanted the computer animation to look like a classic hand-painted film, and the team took inspiration from Rococo paintings, especially Fragonard’s The Swing, with its soft colors and romantic light. New software was developed to animate Rapunzel’s seventy feet of golden hair. It moves, tangles and glows with remarkable realism. The finished film looks warm and painterly, closer to the Disney classics than to Pixar.

The Title Change

The film was developed under the title Rapunzel, and it was renamed Tangled late in production. The studio reportedly worried that a princess title would put off boys, after The Princess and the Frog had disappointed at the box office, and the marketing emphasized Flynn and the action. The change was widely criticised at the time as a sign of the studio’s nervousness about its own traditions.

In the end, the title matters much less than the film, and Tangled proved there was still a huge audience for a Disney princess musical. Its success gave the studio the confidence to make Frozen, and the new era of Disney animation that followed began here.

A Near-Perfect Ending

The climax returns to the tower, where Gothel has recaptured Rapunzel and stabbed Flynn. Rapunzel offers to go with Gothel forever if she can heal him. Flynn, dying, cuts off her hair to free her from Gothel for good, and the hair’s magic dies with it. Gothel ages to dust and falls from the tower. Flynn dies in Rapunzel’s arms, and a single tear, carrying the last of the flower’s magic, brings him back.

The climax is powerful and emotional, built on sacrifice from both sides: Rapunzel is willing to give up her freedom, and Flynn is willing to give up his life. The final scenes, with Rapunzel reunited with her parents and recognized as the lost princess, move as deeply as anything in Disney’s catalogue, played almost entirely without dialogue.

Craft Note

The Verdict on Tangled

It’s a 9 and the best Disney princess film since Beauty and the Beast: funny, romantic, a little frightening and beautiful to look at. Watch it for Mother Gothel, for Maximus and for the lanterns on the lake, and watch it with anyone who’s ever wanted to see the world.

Frequently Asked Questions