Wednesday, May 25, 2011

"You should know that this is the strangest thing I have EVER DONE!" - Thoughts on "Tangled"

But first, happy Towel Day!

And second, "Green With Envy" "Green With Envy" "Green With Envy"!!!!????!!!!

Hooray, another Disney Animated Canon post! It's been too long. Ideally, we'll get two this week; I watched Disney movies while recovering from my cold and I now feel like approximately $990,988..

Movie #62: "Tangled"

2010 was a year full of amazing animated features. "The Illusionist" and
"Legend of the Guardians" and "Tales From EarthSea" were very nice, I loved "Toy Story 3" and "Despicable Me" and "How to Train Your Dragon", and both "Secret of Kells" and "Sita Sings the Blues" knocked my socks off for entirely different reasons.

So I hope nobody takes it as *too* much of a criticism when I say that "Tangled" wasn't as good as some of these other films, OK? I am saying it isn't as good as "Toy Story 3", for goodness sake, and what recent movies are? (I am a little anxious about this because I got a few comments that implied that readers thought my saying, "'Alice in Wonderland' didn't suck as much as I thought it would" meant "Holy sh*t, this movie was amazing!" instead of, "Literally the best thing I can say for this movie is that it didn't entirely suck.")

"Tangled" is very good and well worth a watch (it pains me that some of you may have a hard time being convinced of this but we'll get to that in a minute). Overall, comparing it to other recent D.A.C. films, I didn't like it as much as "The Princess and the Frog". (Tangent: In particular, the songs aren't nearly as good. Alan Menken is working with a new lyricist and the lyrics are... Menken needs to get Joss Whedon on the phone.) But it is a damn sight better than "Bolt". The CGI is far better and more confident than in any of the previous CGI Disney films, and it is SO pretty. Only criticism here is that you have never noticed until now that some of Glen Keane's human characters' faces are, like, 40% eyeball.

Lastly, Disney needs to get a new marketing division like woah. As with "Frog", they've done a capital job of making the movie look like exactly what it isn't (I nailed it earlier last year when I called the "Tangled" ads a "Scott Pilgrim" level of misaimed marketing). Just how worried were they about the supposed "boys think princesses are icky" thing? This little-seen trailer, on the other hand, makes me want Disney to have a copy of my portfolio to review yesterday:





For more posts in this ongoing series, go here, or click the Chronological Disney Animated Canon tag below.

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Sketch of the Day!

I like water monsters. You like water monsters. We all like water monsters, so I did a digital painting of that water monster sketch from an earlier post:

Lake Monster Logo Design