Tangled

[Thor]

Ultimately I thought this movie was "meh"

Don't get me wrong, I thought some of the visuals were very well done, especially the lighting (the lighting in the boat scene is frickin GORGEOUS).

So between the backgrounds, the lighting, and some of the shaders/effects (like Rapuzel's hair glowing), it seems like they're finally getting the idea of what to take advantage of in 3D. The rigging on the character's bodies also looked really good (their faces are a different story; those looked stiff and emotionless at times) and I'd love to get my dirty mitts on them to play with (the amount of squash and stretch on those characters was also very good*). Two thumbs (rendered with extra subsurface scatter) up on the technical side.

That being said, I kind of felt like the script was written for 10 year olds. I know it's a Disney "family film" but I really hate it when a film feels like it's holding my hand by having everything explained by a narrator, as opposed to just showing me what's happening. How to Train your Dragon did this well (which is why it's my favorite animated feature this year so far), so sitting through some segments was actually pretty painful (like the beautiful opening ruined by Flynn's narration).

Overall, I'm glad I watched it, but I don't think  I could sit through all of it again. I'd give it a 7/10: Fun to watch once, but isn't going to save the state of animation. I'd probably just skip to the boat/lantern scene (really gorgeous.) and to watch Rapunzel's hair glow again.

Also, Pascal was adorable.

Also also, I have mixed feelings about the "wax" look. I think I would rather have seen the entire movie with that painterly look, but the wax look definitely looks better than the fake plastic look.

*I'm not actually sure if the rigging had loads of squash and stretch built in. I saw a Disney tech demo once that had the squash and stretch taken care of by a shader, in which case, it's probably the remnants of the original painted look they were going for before

[Mew_User]

Mother Gothel

[Hnilmik]

I love this movie~

Goodness, I don't know where to start! I'm not artist-y enough to nitpick the visuals, aside from the big eyes making themselves pretty distracting at times, but overall, it's a very beautiful film. Would I sound like a dork by saying I wanted to touch the characters' skin? It looked like skin to me, maybe wax if I tried too hard to look for it. The colors are very pretty and yes, the lantern scene made me warm and fuzzy with how beautiful it looks~

Pascal is adorable and Maximus is an epic-awesome horse. I really like how there's so much personality in how Maximus moves as a horse! He kinda freaks me out in how intense he gets! If there's one thing that bugs me when I see CG characters move, it's when they... Kinda don't, like how that friggin' pop from point A to B in different poses a la Madagascar. And Shrek. Just a split second zoom from here to there while giving another annoying line from the script. They don't do that so much in this, which is very nice. At least the characters walk or move from here to there, employing offscreen teleportation at most (which is forgivable). I often forgot I was watching a CG film and not a 2D one.

But thing that mattered most to me: How was the princess story handled?

One thing I've came to realize is that a lot, if not all, of Disney's princess stories are wonky in that they pitch forth a strong princess, but they technically don't make it as far as you'd hope. They "need a man to save them", they "need a man to marry and be happy", and "they need to get used to settling down". Tiana got extremely close to breaking that, by being incredibly independent, hardworking, and take-charge enough to beat the bad guy herself, but she had to go through a fairy tale loophole by getting married to get everything she wanted in the end. Before this comes off as Lisa Simpson-y, there's absolutely nothing wrong with getting married, but the problem lies in that the princess character often gives up what makes them great while fitting in their new life. Like, they want to be free, but end up cooped in another castle, so to speak. That "oh dear, you're a queen/married now, so you have to behave like a true woman" that tends to occur in the sequels we deny the existence of, as if they weren't woman enough by the end of the story they were meant to complete.

The neat thing about Tangled is that it's truly Rapunzel's story. Even when we were going to get insight on Flynn's past, the focus was always on Rapunzel. She has to deal with a lifetime of being a shut-in at the hands of an emotionally and psychologically abusive "mother". Mother Gothel is one heck of a unique villain in how she keeps getting away with it since she's not magical--She's just incredibly manipulative and I felt really, really bad for Rapunzel every time Mother Gothel was "nice" to her. Rapunzel is independent and capable of herself, while her shut-in mode shows up as her key weakness because of Mother Gothel's influence (that Flynn even tries to take advantage of). I like how if she's going to get out of this story as a stronger character, she had to overcome this problem of hers.

Now for the ending... [spoiler]Yes, technically, Eugene had to save her, but you have to give some credit, Rapunzel overcame that weakness the best she thought she could. She definitely fought every step of the way once she caught on that Mother Gothel kidnapped her and has been lying to her. If only she caught on to what Mother Gothel was doing by having Eugene show up, huh? It got interesting in how Rapunzel ultimately had to save Eugene though, after he saved her and off'd Gothel. I like how in the end, Eugene asked for Rapunzel's hand in marriage after years of being together, but wasn't sure what to make of it since it felt kinda tacked on too.[/spoiler]

Overall, I'm on the fence with how the princess-story-thing is handled, but at least Rapunzel made it further than Tiana did. I think? At least as a whole, the movie is solid and I like that.