There’s a reason a movie took six years and approximately 260 million dollars to finish. This was back when Disney wanted to tell a story and take as much time as they needed to make it classic. With musical scores by Alan Menken, talented voice actors, and Disney animation it was bound to be good. But some people today don’t appreciate the film for the wrong reasons. Paranoid conservatives think it had some hidden politically correct agenda (because all recent films have), and extreme leftists think it wasn’t politically correct enough. I think the film wasn’t pushing any agenda beyond the telling of a good story with excellent music, rich comedy, and a theme of redemption and coming of age. It goes without saying, my sister and I liked Tangled far better than Frozen. Let’s jump into why the film charmed me then and holds up now.

A Tale as old as Time:

The plot of this film is so simple and classically fairytale that it stands out amongst modern Disney films trying desperately to not be classic fairytales. The story is about a vain witch (in definitions fantastical and literal) who wants to be young forever and so steals a baby from her parents and keeps her prisoner under the guise of being her mother. Therefore, the stage is already set with two parents in agony over losing their only child, an innocent girl who’s now basically captive and has never seen the real world, and a wicked villain willing to ruin as many people’s lives as possible in order to maintain what she wants. What are character’s motives?

-The king and queen want their daughter back.

-Rapunzel wants to venture outside her sheltered life and experience adventure because she knows there must to more to her existence.

-Mother Gothel wants to keep the girl forever so she can be young and beautiful.

Enter 3 thieves. Flynn Ryder wants nothing more than to escape the kingdom with wealth, and his ruthless partners want a similar thing. You probably already know what happens but I’ll tell you anyway. Flynn Ryder agrees to help Rapunzel leave her tower if she lets him have his payment. In helping her the thief has a change of heart and decides his love for the girl is more important than any material wealth. So you have an anti-hero thief on a mission with an innocent girl searching for adventure in the great wide somewhere, vs an evil witch and ruthless thugs….I was sold from the trailer. The story is so classic that when I saw the trailer I wondered how 2010 Disney came up with it. I was honestly wondering if they’d stolen the notes in my journal for my future fairytale—the Princess and the Thief. But that’s a story for another time.

Since Rapunzel, the idea of the Disney princess has been parodied, mocked and avoided at all costs. The idea of romantic love and redemption being more important than self discovery or materialism has faded out of style. Today, classic concepts like the thief with the heart of gold, the sheltered princess with a brave heart, two unlikely characters falling in love, they’ve all gone out of style. Frozen desperately tried to avoid all these things and in turn what we got was a movie trying not to be other movies. If you have a classic story but want to tell it in a new way-do it. Beauty and the Beast, Lady and the Tramp and Tangled all deal with the relationship between a virtuous female character (who lacks worldly experience) and a controversial Byronic male character (who’s typically more world wearied). Are any of them copy cats of each other? No. Because a classic theme can be sprinkled or redone countless times and it wont get old as long as you do it well.

Rapunzel-the sheltered idealistic girl who has to learn for herself just how much good and evil is out there:

Rapunzel gets a lot of flack because of the non continuity events of Tangled Ever After and in general for being such a sheltered (and even naïve at times) character. I found Rapunzel to be not only relatable but refreshing and encouraging as a female heroine.

-Rapunzel is an innocent. This is played as both a gift and curse in her current journey. She’s been very sheltered and as such really has no idea what the real world is like. However, when confronted with obstacles in the real world (whether they’re physical, emotional or moral) like a real human being, sometimes she rises to the challenge and overcomes, other times she’s blind sided because she has no experience. This might be frustrating to watch, our heroine getting embarrassed or bumbling over herself because she lacks such world experience, but it’s relatable. For an innocent who has never committed any serious wrongs in her life, Rapunzel has no idea how to react when confronted with manipulation (by her mother), treachery, (by first Flynn trying to rid himself of her and later Gothel), or even being chased by the law.

-She’s resourceful, brave, but she’s constantly thinking on her feet to deal with things. She isn’t unrealistically capable of handling everything she encounters with suave finesse.

-Rapunzel’s innocence is also confronted in the finale when she falls prey to believing Flynn Ryder really betrayed her. He’s the first man she’s ever been able to interact with and she also had feelings for him. Her believing Gothel’s lie reveals she is in fact insecure about her lack of experience. Like a real insecure human, Rapunzel doubts if the goodness she believes to be in Flynn is genuine, or blind.

-Even though mother Gothel lies about Flynn, Rapunzel still does have a coming of age experience that like Judy Hopps says, “life is more complicated than something you’d see on a bumper sticker.” Flynn Ryder began a selfish man but changed, Gothel (who Rapunzel seemingly loved) was always evil and selfish, and the other criminals with Flynn were willing to sell Rapunzel because of her hair. Rapunzel is confronted with true evil in many characters, and both sin and virtue in Flynn Ryder. She sees the world isnt some wonderful place like she always believed, but not everyone is Gothel.

That’s another thing Tangled does so well, and thats having characters grow and change. The characters have an arc and they go from point A to point B.

Flynn Ryder-the thief with the heart of…first a desire for enormous piles of money but by the end he changes:

My only criticism of Flynn Ryder and arguably the film (but I won’t nit pick) is the degree to which he’s made comical. Disney does comedy well most of the time, and I’ve Got a dream is both funny and a little heartwarming so I’m not complaining there. However, because Flynn Ryder was playing such a controversial male character in a heavily “toxic masculinity aware” time, he takes an abnormal amount of abuse at parts in the film. Rapunzel breaks his face with a frying pan, and he’s beat up by the horse repeatedly. However, it isn’t so overwhelming that he’s incompetent or purely comical. I also understand in light of the role he’s playing (a covetous rakish thief who’s trying to ditch the innocent girl and make off with the money), Disney had to find a way to make him less objectionable. Naturally, the way to tone down how much of a threat we see a man or any character as, writers have them get beat up or laughed at. In my personal opinion, it could have been toned down, but to each their own. Never the less, the character was one of the last few heroic and complex male love interest we got.

-Flynn Ryder doesn’t start out as a good person. He’s constantly trying to leave Rapunzel or scare her into running home because he knows how sheltered she is and he tries to use it to his advantage frequently.

-Flynn is shown to be bad enough that his sole drive is wealth, but not so corrupt or hard hearted he would ever hurt Rapunzel. He saves her in the finale by killing Gothel (something which would never be allowed in a recent Disney film because heaven forbid we should kill an evil person), and when their drowning he fights to save her.

-Flynn has a change of heart at the end and realizes Rapunzel is more important than material wealth. He only breaks out of prison to save her.

Once again, the idea of the man actually protecting the female and being in love with her (or changing for her) aren’t politically correct in todays world. But Tangled was the last film to get away with it.

All at once, everything is different:

I’ve said it before and I’ll probably say it again, the days when I would watch a movie, meet a guy and a girl character and have hopes of a good romance are long behind me. With the exception of Robert Pattinson and Zoe Kravitz of course. In Tangled they actually set up two completely different characters and bring them together throughout the course of the film in a way that compliments the story and them.

Rapunzel and Flynn couldn’t be more different:

-Rapunzel is barely 18 and has zero life experience beyond her tower. She’s good hearted, innocent and idealistic. Rapunzel feels bad about leaving her mother for only 3 days to go on an adventure and is genuinely racked with guilt for the first part of their journey. Her pursuits are to see floating lights on her birthday and then go home-not exactly world conquering or selfish.

-Flynn Ryder is an orphan with a childhood too sad to share. His desires are for wealth and fame. Flynn has presumably done many things to wound or weaken his conscience and therefore finds Rapunzel’s guilt over leaving to see the lights ridiculous. He only indulges it to get rid of her. Flynn Ryder has to learn to be less selfish and put Rapunzel before his past selfish desires. I see the Light is about both Rapunzel and Flynn realizing that their prior pursuits were what they wanted but not what they needed.

And finally…the existence of evil:

If you’ve read any of my other articles you knew this was coming. I don’t like the politically correct world where we punch traitors/murders/ and say “bad boy!” cough* Frozen. Or where we don’t allow people to fall in love they simply date cough* Anna and Kristoff—and I really don’t like when the existence of evil is neutered or made into a joke cough* Spiderman Homecoming. What am I getting at? Tangled has more serious stakes than recent Disney and some Marvel films because they don’t like portraying or addressing evil. Someone pointed out that in Tangled aside from Rapunzel, most of the other characters are far from good people.

-Flynn Ryder is a money loving thief.

-Gothel is a vain murderous kidnapping witch.

-The Stabbington Brothers are thieves, thugs, and potential killers willing to sell a young girl for her hair.

-And then there’s the bar full of no count thugs (who’s hands violence wise are not the cleanest) with dreams.

Not exactly the cast of the Brady Bunch. Why this works in the film’s favor, is because for good to truly shine it has to be getting its butt kicked 80% to 90% of the film. We see so many characters with selfish motives we find it relatable to real life and it gives us more cause to empathize with our heroine because she is the minority. And one honest person is more appreciated when they’re surrounded by degenerates. And lets face it, in real life sometimes the nice person with good intentions is the exception. That makes Rapunzel more inspiring though because she has to be good when surrounded by bad people. This was also the last Disney Film to kill it’s villain. Rapunzel might be brave but in the end Flynn saves her. Gothel has stolen the King and Queens only child and stabbed Flynn Ryder, he doesn’t think twice about stealing her youth and her life. Flynn kills Gothel and she withers to a hag falling to her death. That’s the way I want to see a villain go out. Justice. Recent Disney films have lost every sense of justice and traded it for inoffensive comedy.

So in conclusion, if it’s been a minute since you’ve seen Tangled…watch it again. Compare and contrast to see just how much has been missing from the recent films.