Oh, What A Tangled Web We Weave

We went to another movie in the park last night.  And if you couldn't guess from the title of this post, the movie was Tangled, the Disney animated film about Repunzel.  This movie, if you can believe it, has actually been developing at Disney for almost ten years.  Sure, it takes a lot of time to hand draw an hour and forty minutes of movie.  And it takes time to record the voices and the songs and everything, but ten years?  Actually, there's a reason for that.

For a while, this movie was going to simply be another princess story in the vein of all the other Disney princess stories.  However, Disney started to realize that princess movies didn't bring in a lot of little boys to see them and needed to do something fast.  Within a year, Disney changed the story around slightly to focus on a male character, Flynn Rider.  In fact, he even narrates the beginning and the end of the story - bookending the whole "boys in princess movies are cool" kind of theory.  Don't get me wrong, it works perfectly.  And, surprisingly, despite having a lot more action than a normal princess movie, it's still the story of a little girl that turns out to be a princess and the adventure that leads to that discovery.

The story is well written and the characters are very human.  The trapped Repunzel, wanting to leave her tower, but not knowing what lies ahead, seems innocent and naive at first and as she starts to understand the real world, begins to realize she's stronger than she thought.  Mother Gothel, a surrogate mother to Repunzel wants to keep the girl locked in the tower for selfish reasons, but even those reasons, are very human, like a mother wanting to protect her daughter.  Flynn, as a handsome young man, appears arrogant and overflowing with ego.  But the way his character is written, these characteristics are played perfectly.

One thing that I thought was beautifully done was the animation.  It was a CGI rendering of actual hand drawn animation, as if the drew the images on paper and then imported them into the CGI world, which gave the animation the sense of depth and color and brought it to life through the CGI.

I've been reading about this movie ever since it was announced that it was actually happening several years ago because one of my most favorite Disney animators was directing it.  You wouldn't probably know his name, but you know his work.  He has been the lead animator of Ariel, Pocahontas, the Beast, Aladdin and Tarzan.  His animation style is different for every film and yet, as the one who tends to animate the heroes or heroines, the style ends up being bold and striking each time.  And even though he didn't actually animate the characters in Tangled, he supervised it, and made certain that each of the characters offered the same bold and striking features that he put into his characters when he was animating them.

And who is this great animator?  Well, he's someone that comes from a family of four children that can be quite a handful.  His name is Glen Keane, the son of Bil Keane, who created The Family Circus comic strip that has been running in newspapers for over fifty years.  Ironically, the character of Billy is based on Glen, but it is Glen's brother, Jeff, that actually assists their father in the production of the comic strip.  Sadly, Glen was needed on other projects and had to abandon overall direction of the film, but managed to continue to finish supervising the animation before he was needed elsewhere.

There was a moment in the movie that I want to mention here. As you all know, I'm one who really likes to think about my dreams and what might lie ahead on my adventure through life. There is a point where Repunzel and Flynn are talking.

Rapunzel: I've been looking out of a window for eighteen years, dreaming about what I might feel like when those lights rise in the sky. What if it's not everything I dreamed it would be?

Flynn Rider: It will be.

Rapunzel: And what if it is? What do I do then?

Flynn Rider: Well,that's the good part I guess. You get to go find a new dream.

Finding a new dream is always something that I want to strive for. There's nothing wrong with having the big dreams - the big house, the money, the car, whatever it is. Big dreams are good life goals. The best kind of dreams should be the little ones - being nice to everyone at work today, not overreacting to something simple, going to church. The more little dreams you accomplish, the more confident you feel about one day achieving some of the bigger dreams.  Write down some of the little dreams.  Dreams that could be done within a short period of time.  Cross them off as you go.  It's good for the soul, just like Tangled is.


Until next time.