Blu-ray Review: Tangled
Great movie, weak Blu-ray release
One of my top ten films of 2010, Tangled is another classic Disney animated film and an easy one to dive right back into, but for a film that holds a 90% rating at RottenTomatoes and made nearly $200 million at the domestic box-office this is a rather weak release.
Yeah, the film is still phenomenal and the picture and audio are excellent, but the special features would make you think this was a second class Disney feature.
No audio commentary, no Blu-ray exclusive feature length bonus feature and a shoddy 12 minute making-of feature instead of the traditional Backstage Disney bonus docs. Beyond that you get three deleted scenes, two alternate storybook openings and some teaser trailers.
The making-of feature is led by Mandy Moore and Zachary Levi and basically plays like a Disney Channel aside, but I will say the introductions to the deleted scenes and alternate openings by co-directors Nathan Greno and Byron Howard do add a bit of insight into a few different directions the story could have gone. The decision to change and/or drop all of the deleted and alternate examples on this disc were all great choices. I didn't like the direction any of them took the characters, although I did git a slight chuckle out of watching the final deleted scene with a fortune telling monkey.
Oh, and you also get the following "50th Animated Feature Countdown".
I added three clips from the special features to the bottom of this review.
I think this is a Blu-ray must buy, but only because I quite like this movie. However, if you're second guessing the purchase and hoping this release will add a little something in terms of special features to make it worth your while I'm sorry to say there isn't much here. It's a surprisingly bland release given the fact everyone seemed to really like it. I guess that just means you can expect a Platinum Blu-ray release in about two or three years, urging you to buy it again, or buy it for the first time.
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Tangled's great fun, and a film that quietly chugged away at the box office passing both Despicable Me and How to Train Your Dragon in worldwide gross. (And what a massive amount of animated hits last year… the top six animated films combined to pull in $3.7 billion dollars worldwide.)
Glad to see Disney Animation getting back its stride. Hopefully they can keep that success going.
great movie, already got it
Am I really the only person bothered by the ridiculous amount of plot holes? The mother turning old when her hair is cut even though Rapunzel still proved she had the healing ability inside her? The fact that the royal guards knew there was a magic flower in the forest for no reason? The old woman knowing that the particular song will make the flower's power work? And an old woman getting into the queen's bedroom without ANYONE noticing? Come on… I couldn't be the only one bothered.
None of that really bothered me, no. I can make up answers if necessary:
–Regardless of whether magic remained within Rapunzel, her mother used the hair to maintain her youth. Once the hair was cut, there went her link to her youth.
–Everybody knows the legend of the fountain of youth without it ever having been found, or the Holy Grail, or any number of things. Why wouldn't this magical flower be legendary in that kingdom? If you're really going to be thrown by every story that includes "Legend has it that…" as exposition to start a quest, you're not going to find a lot of old tales to enjoy.
–Likewise, every spell used by every magician in every story would have had to be stumbled upon by the very first magician to use it. Besides, who is to say that there's only one song to activate the flower's healing powers? Maybe just singing directly to it and asking for its help is all that's needed, and once they found a phrasing that worked they kept with it.
–A horse was the most competent soldier in the kingdom. So no… in light of that, a security breach suddenly doesn't seem all that unlikely.
In the end, this is all backstory to a magic-filled fairytale. I tend to feel that you pretty much have to accept the set up you're given for such a story. Rules in fairy tales tend to be pretty arbitrary, after all. Home by midnight, kisses from your true love and all of that.
I will say, however, that I do wish that the "teardrop of sunshine" bit from that alternate opening had made it into the final film (if it did, I don't recall it.) It does a much better job of setting up the ending, I think.