#chibineko24

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chibineko24

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“Something that bothers me but shouldn’t: kids are going to grow up...”

Why did you dislike it?

I disliked Tangled for a lot of reasons. 

I think the “main” reason is the songs. I don’t think I enjoyed a single song from that movie. “Mother Knows Best” was bearable, but not good. The rest were an absolute struggle to sit through. Songs are very important to me in musicals. If you can’t nail the songs, you just don’t have a good musical.  I can forgive a lot if the songs are good. And the songs in Tangled were crap. 

Secondly, the plot was bad. They really didn’t take ANYTHING from the original story except for “girl with long hair who is, at least at some point, in a tower”. Which, like, is fine to an extent because at least they didn’t have the audacity then to actually call it “Rapunzel”. Like, at least it was kind of trying to say “this is a different story”. But like...unless you at least include the part about her mother craving the food called “rapunzel”, then the name makes no sense and you just randomly have a girl named after what is essentially like...spinach or lettuce. The flower effecting her hair seemed dumb to me. Also like...why would that make it so you couldn’t cut it? Why is that a thing? And that her hair literally never grows back, even as brown, when it’s cut? Why? Why wouldn’t it not just then be normal hair? Also, why did the mother tell her that the lanterns were on her birthday? Why didn’t she tell her it was literally any other day? Why didn’t she come up with a lie about what they were for? There was a lot of dumb stuff like that (the frying pan gag, the ‘hair fu’. The horrible, horrible vikings or whoever they were in that tavern who sang the worst song in the movie and all were awful) but it wasn’t unforgivable in that way. Movie’s gotta have a way to move the plot along. I get that.

Another thing I disliked pretty strongly was the animal companions. I know a lot of people who are against animal companions as a rule, but I’m not generally that way. And I also understand that animal companions are going to be humanized to an extent to make them more relateable and likable.  But like...the animal companions in Tangled were too smart/human-like. Like...the horse could literally sword fight.  I hated everything about that horse, honestly. The chameleon was okay, but felt shoehorned into the movie just to have a “cute animal companion” with no relevance to the plot or....any remote explanation of what a generally African lizard was doing in a clearly European based country? Like, Pocahontas had a raccoon and a humming bird, because those live in North America. While tigers aren’t usually found in the desert, Jasmine had a tiger because she was a princess who had many exotic animals imported from other places. Pascal is sort of just...there? And does...nothing the whole movie except be creepily smart. 

The horse is probably one of my biggest gripes with the movie. It was just a terrible character. If they wanted another human character, they could have had another human character, if they wanted a dog, they could have added a dog, if they wanted a horse, they could have made it act in any way like a horse. Instead it was this way too smart, “trying way too hard to be funny and thus not being funny at all”, dog/person hybrid in the shape of a horse. Everything that horse did was dumb and not funny and he was way too big of a character. 

And honestly, even if you did want a super smart, super human-like animal companion, just go the full way and go like the mice in Cinderella or the animals in Princess and The Frog. Make them fully sentient characters who basically fill the role of a human character. Instead they got stuck deep in the uncanny valley. Too human to be a good animal, but human enough to be really unsettling and uncomfortable to watch.

Also, character design was crap. It just was. Rapunzel’s design is lazy, unoriginal, and uninspired. Big,light eyes, tiny nose, super skinny, pale skin, etc etc. Not to mention that she basically kicked off the like 10 different identical-looking Rapunzel clones Disney has churned out since then. Nothing about her design was interesting at all. Eugene was ok. But pretty boring, too. The only character who was in any way interestingly designed was the villain and the things that made them interesting were specifically there to code them as a villain. 

Like, mother Gothel’s kinky, black hair, bigger, hooked nose, high cheekbones. All of that was supposed to show that she’s the villain.  And that’s not even getting into the fact that most of those are stereotypes of jewish features. There’s a reason people compare her so often to Idina Menzel and Lisa Edelstein:

The romance was forced, as most are. The two characters seemed to have no chemistry besides “girl and boy”. Like, girl, he’s literally the first man you’ve EVER MET. Literally the first person you’ve ever met besides your mom. Take some time to know yourself before throwing yourself into a relationship! But again, that’s most movies for you. 

And maybe the worst thing (besides the songs. Those were just.....so soo bad) is that the movie COULD have done something with itself. There was the potential for some really great stuff. Like, this is the first Disney movie where we see and abusive parent that says things like “I love you” and really acts like she cares about her child. Her manipulation and abuse is emotional and mental for the most part. And for one scene it really feels like they’re going to do something with it. When Rapunzel first gets out and basically has a panic attack that she’s hurting her mother and how she’s a horrible daughter and being so conflicted about leaving because of the poison that Mother Gothel has filled her head with, that really seemed like they could do some great stuff with it. She’s been raised her whole life to see literally everyone in the world besides her mother as a bloodthirsty literal monster (she checks Eugene for horns and fangs) who is only interested in hurting her. But they don’t DO anything with that. We could have seen someone from an abusive background slowly learn to trust others, while still clearly dealing with their own damage. Instead we get 5 seconds of her being afraid/conflicted, then it’s basically never brought up again and, even though she has never had any human contact besides her mother, be completely competent and comfortable in social situations. 

Also the whole “abusive parent” thing that was really the only redeeming thing this movie had going for it was pretty much negated by the fact that she was kidnapped. It’s again reinforcing the idea that your “real” parents would never hurt you. You have to love your “real” parents.  It’s only step parents or adoptive parents that could be abusive. Which is such garbage. And then, the second that Rapunzel learns that Mother Gothel is not her biological mother, she basically doesn’t care about her at all. There’s no lingering affection or confliction about killing her. I’m not saying like “oh well she raised her so she had to like her”. Not at all. But like...she raised her basically to be obsessed with her. That she was the only good person. That she was the only one who loved her or would ever love her. Yet the second that Rapunzel learns that she’s not her “real” mom, she just discards all of that in a second with no like, emotional conflict or anything vaguely interesting. 

So, tl;dr: 

Songs were bad.

Characters were bad.

Character design was boring at best, offensive at worst.

Story was bland and boring despite having the potential to be much better.

Also, songs were just...so bad. Like...SO bad. 

#chibineko24 #long post #rant #anti-tangled