Trailer Tuesday: Tangled

Thank you Shrek for putting the idea into Hollywood's hive mind that audiences don't like faithful film adaptations of fairy tales. No, apparently moviegoers can't stomach watching the classic stories depicted onscreen without embellishment. Viewers only want goofy action, pop music and "clever" contemporary spins on centuries-old narratives. Even Disney - the company synonymous with animated fairy tale films - seems to have embraced to this mistaken mindset.

So of course now that it's finally time to give Rapunzel a high profile animated treatment (the less said about Barbie as Rapunzel the better), audiences can expect a very loose adaptation of the original folk tale recorded by the Brothers Grimm in the early 1800s. In fact, the fairy tale's proper name hasn't even survived the translation to the big screen. Although known as Rapunzel and Rapunzel Unbraided during earlier stages of development, Disney's next CGI-animated film will officially debut as Tangled.


Along with a cryptic title, and a voice cast that includes Mandy Moore as Rapunzel and Chuck's Zachary Levi as the film's male lead - debonair thief Flynn Rider - Tangled is notable for extensive changes from its source material. In the trailer there is no prince in sight, a distinct lack of jagged thorn bushes and, most surprisingly, a complete demotion of the fairy tale's blonde, braided heroine in favour of more screen time for her male lead. Of course, this last shift in focus could just be a marketing decision to make the film, a musical, seem less "girlie," but it still suggests that the character of Flynn Rider will be more important than Rapunzel.

For the record, Tangled is made solely by Walt Disney Animation Studios. The film may be computer animated, but it doesn't come with the Pixar pedigree. And, unfortunately, it shows. The trailer for Tangled is as disjointed as its soundtrack (Pink AND 5 seconds of the Narnia score?). The film looks as if it's seriously straining itself to appear breezy and amusing, and the effect is unsatisfactorily forced. Turning Rapunzel into Bayonetta, with her super-powered hair, is also a strange miscalculation.


What Untangled currently does have going for it, at least, is an aesthetic that deliberately meshes computer-generated imagery and traditional hand-drawn animation to a greater degree than most 21st Century animated films. The old school pen-and-paper creative process comes through especially strongly in the character designs and their facial expressions.

At this point though, I have seen nothing that intrigues me about Tangled to the point of triggering a need to watch it at the cinema. Disney had better tweak their marketing campaign and the content of the film's trailers or I may give this one a miss. And that's a great pity because Rapunzel is one of the few major fairy tales Hollywood has left untouched for decades - even if that's understandably because of the story's general bleakness, and heroine's unforgivable stupidity.

Tangled releases in conventional format and 3D in North America on 24 November. It is unclear when the film will begin screening in South Africa, but sometime between December and Easter 2011 seems likely.