rapunzel | the m0vie blog

Non-Review Review: Tangled

Posted on January 16, 2011 by Darren

Disney’s 50th animated feature film is something of a return to traditional values. Despite the surrounding discussion about whether this would be Disney’s last “princess” fairytale film or whether boys would respond to the story of Rapunzel, the movie is assuredly old school in its style. Although the way that it has been handled by the studio betrays a stunning insecurity about it, it’s self-assured a good old fashioned fairytale at heart. Though it moves away from hand-drawn animation to computer-generated imagery (though it’s reportedly heavily influenced by the old-school approach to animation), it couldn’t be more of a traditional Disney film if it tried. After so many attempts to update, subvert, revise, deconstruct or play with that classic formula, sometimes it’s nice to be served a traditional film, straight-up.

Go on, let your hair down!

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: animation, cgi, Computer-generated imagery, deconstruction, disney, disney's tangled, fairytale, Little Red Riding Hood, non-review review, princess, rapunzel, review, shrek, tangled, the princess and the frog, The Walt Disney Company | 2 Comments »

The Princess is Dead, Long Live the Princess: Disney Won’t Be Letting Fairy Tales Live Happily Ever After…

Posted on December 1, 2010 by Darren

Apparently Disney are putting an end to the production of fairy tales, which is somewhat ironic for a studio which has an iconic fairytale castle as its distinctive corporate logo. I suppose it was sort of inevitable coming from a studio that was terrified of advertising Tangled as a “princess” movie. Disney board director John Lasseter explained the decision:

Today, among little girls especially, princesses and the romanticised ideal they represent – finding the man of your dreams – have a limited shelf life.

It’s very clever to couch his argument in what might be considered modern feminist terms – “finding the man of your dreams” is such a fifties aspiration for young girls, after all – but I’m not entirely sure I’m comfortable with what Disney plans to replace them with. I’ll admit that I am a relatively conservative individual – I just don’t like change – but there’s something unsettling about such a major refocus, and perhaps what it says about pop culture as a whole these days.

Okay, so maybe Disney needs to work on its female leads...

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: animation, bratz, children, children's films, disney, disney films, disney movies, disney princesses, Fairy tale, film, John Lasseter, Los Angeles Times, mainstream, Movies, pixar, popular, princess, rapunzel, Southern Illinois University, tangled, the princess and the frog, The Walt Disney Company | 4 Comments »

Disney’s Tangled Rapunzel Name Change

Posted on March 11, 2010 by Darren

Disney: It’s not for boys.

It emerged earlier in the week that Disney changed the name of their next almost-conventionally-animated movie from Rapunzel, which makes sense, to Tangled, which doesn’t. People were a little confused, since Disney has traditionally been fairly straightforward in making its adaptations – Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast, The Princess and the Frog, Snow White, The Little Mermaid and so on are all named for the myths and stories which form their basis. Why the sudden name change? Apparently because boys won’t go to see Disney movies. Apparently they are more likely to go and see a movie called Tangled.

All tangled up...

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: animation, cartoons, disney, male audience, Movies, rapunzel, sexism, tangled, the princess and the frog | 19 Comments »

Getting Animated – The Revival of Old-Fashioned Animation?

Posted on July 31, 2009 by Darren

We live in the era of 3D and CGI. I remember back in they day there were worries and complaints by all the unions in Hollywood that the advent of perfect CGI would mean the end of actors in Hollywood – why pay Jim Carrey $20m a film when you can create a character for a fraction of that? Needless to say it hasn’t happened yet and I doubt it will. Hollywood and movies have always been the land of personalities. Get rid of those personalities and you have very little. It isn’t the antics of directors and writers that fuel the tabloid industry. So it’s logical that the part of the industry that has been most threatened by the marching on of science is the one where there is already minimal personality. I speak of course of the death of 2D animation. Although I hope I’m being premature – there have been two stories in the past 24 hours that indicated that old-fashioned non-live action films may not be quite dead.