Film reviews
Men In Black 3
It’s not a sequel that needed to be made, but thanks to the charm of its leads and a tone that harks back to the wit and humour of the original, it’s a pretty enjoyable trip.
Bel Ami
The excellent female support cast saves this patchy effort, which is let down by its leading man and a flat screenplay.
The Dictator
A disappointing, often repulsive and mean-spirited mess of a film with seemingly only one real criterion on its agenda: to shock and offend.
The Woman In Black
Packed with atmosphere, this old-fashioned but deftly told ghost story delivers ample chills and thrills.
search the site
newsletter
Enter your email address below to receive the weekly Filmink newsletter
Tangled (Film)
Rating: PG
Running Time: 100
Country: USA
Director: Nathan Greno, Byron Howard
Cast: Zachary Levi, Mandy Moore
Distributor: Walt Disney
Release Date: January 06, 2011
Film Worth: $19.00
FILMINK rates movies out of $20 - the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worthState-of-the-art computer animation meets classic Disney storytelling.
In Tangled - a retelling of The Brothers Grimm's Rapunzel - Disney has accomplished what it set out to do with 2009's The Princess & The Frog. Although the former is computer-generated animation and the latter hand-drawn, both films centre on feisty heroines. Beautiful as it was, The Princess & The Frog was not a deeply stirring experience. Tangled is.
The blueprint for this fairytale about the girl with the excessively long, magical hair is obviously familiar: baby princess gets kidnapped by an evil old woman who hijacks the hair to use as her own personal fountain-of-youth. The lost princess Rapunzel (wonderfully voiced by Mandy Moore) is locked away in a hidden tower, where she awaits not Prince Charming, but an outlaw (a reasonable Zachary Levi).
This is Disney, so the storytelling's a safe bet, but the music is potentially a worry. As it turns out, the songs - of which there are mercifully few - range from the expectedly cheesy to the not-half-bad. One tune, as sung by hilariously mean Viking-types at a seedy medieval pub, is even pretty good. The action is tremendous (especially a sequence involving a thrilling flood of water), the 3-D is used judiciously, the script is spiced with real wit, and the storytelling is truly exceptional - every single character is here for a reason.
Tangled is family friendly yet made to appeal strongly to adults, with the moral of the tale revolving around the idea of not holding yourself back. With the aim of bringing the fluidity of hand-drawn animation into the CGI realm, Tangled is not only visually splendid, but it's one to get swept away in. This is animation of the highest order. CGI geeks - miss it and weep.
