Tangled: Disney's Ripping Rapunzel

The current animation at Pixar, DreamWorks and Fox’s Blue Sky (the Ice Age series) concentrates on buddy movies and has all but female-centered stories. It can't be simply that the Cartoon Directors' Club is almost exclusively a male presenter, since the Disney films, from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to Mulan, were also men-made. It may be that their bosses think girls will go to boys' movies but boys won't go to girls'. Feature animation is an expensive business, and films are seen as a place too small to be worth the cost.

At the Disney animation unit, now under control by Pixar's John Lasseter, there's still a belief in girl power as shown, with amazing élan and skill, in last year's The Princess and the Frog and today in the pleasing, warming Tangled. It's the Brothers Grimm story of Rapunzel, imprisoned in a high tower by a witch, with the girl's long hair the witch's only means of way out. Under house arrest for years, disturbed for her freedom by the kingdom that misses her, she's the Aung San Suu Kyi of fairy-tale heroines. Just a few differences: Rapunzel (voiced by Mandy Moore) has 70-ft.-long (21 m) hair that can serve as a rope ladder; her jailer is not the Burmese government but the Gothel (Donna Murphy); and whereas Suu Kyi remained in imprison while her husband died of cancer in London, our princess finds a dashing thief, known as Flynn Ryder (Zachary Levi), to facilitate her escape.

STORY LINE
Having spent her entire life within the tower Rapunzel is full of interest about the outside world. One day while Mother Gothel is away, Rapunzel is scared by a surprise visitor coming through her window, the dashing, mischievous bandit Flynn Rider Flynn is on the run from his brutish former partners, the Stabbing ton Brothers, after escaping with a jeweled crown they had stolen. 
Following their meet-cute introduction, Rapunzel and Flynn make a deal. He will guide her through the rough country to the kingdom, where she'll finally get to see the annual festival of lights. In exchange, Rapunzel will give Flynn back the stolen tiara she's hidden from him. 

The title was changed to Tangled because The Princess and the Frog was no great hit at the box office and because Disney wanted to make the project seem less ... girlish. The trailers suggest that the movie is an action comedy about a mischievous guy (Flynn) whose mission is to fight and free the girl from the tower. But no, this is your basic, and very enjoyable, Disney princess musical, a tale to teach bright, dreamy girls how to grow to maturity.

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By Hania Rana