Catch it if you missed it: Disney's "Tangled" is studio's best film in the last decade

The Wife and I finally caught this one this week via Netlifx.

We’re both Disney fanatics but ended up avoiding “Tangled” when it was in theatres. I wanted to see it but April was skeptical of non-Pixar Disney computer animation. She was not particularly blown away by their last CGI efforts – “Bolt,” “Meet the Robinson,” and “Chicken Little” — so we passed seeing it in theatres. BIG MISTAKE.

The animation in “Tangled” is colorful and vivid — heads and tails above Disney’s previous efforts, far superior to Dreamworks, and at the same level as Pixar. More important, though, is the quality of the film itself. “Tangled,” which is an adaptation of Rapunzel, hits all the bases of traditional Disney animation.  Its characters, music, and sense of adventure are right up with the best of the Disney Renaissance period and the previous artistic/commercial high of the “Cinderella” through “Sleeping Beauty” 1950s period.

And don’t be fooled by the trailer embedded above which really doesn’t do the film justice. They had no idea how to market this film — hence the stupid decision to rename it “Tangled” to try and appeal to a young boy demographic. They should have just called it “Rapunzel.” But that’s really the only point of criticism I have with the picture. Were I still a film critic it would have earned an A in my ratings system, thus identifying itself as a film worth purchasing on DVD (or Blu-Ray today) and watching multiple times.

Given the success of both “Tangled” and “The Princess and the Frog” I have high hopes for “Winnie the Pooh” next weekend. It looks like Disney may be returning to one of its Boom periods after 10 years’ worth of wandering in the animated wilderness while Pixar kept the Disney tradition alive.