During the late 2000s, Disney was slowly starting to find its footing again. After a pretty bad run which practically killed their 2D animation department, Disney tried to return to their roots and bring life back to their name by returning to an all-too familiar avenue, a fairy tale princess movie. This led to two movies coming out very close to each other; The Princess and the Frog in 2009 and Tangled in 2010. While both were responsible for bringing Disney out of their ditch and paved the way for many more wonderful Disney properties, the 2D animated Princess and the Frog didn’t do nearly as well as the 3D animated Tangled. Since both are very similar in what the accomplished, why did one connect more with audiences than the other? Set in the fictional world of Corona, a baby princess is stolen from her parents by Mother Gothel (voiced by Donna Murphy), an ancient woman who wishes for the princess’ magical hair to keep her young. Locking her away in a tower for 18 years, the girl grows up into Rapunzel (voiced by Mandy Moore) who wishes to venture outside to see the floating lights that appear on her birthday, which are actually lanterns sent by the kingdom in order to find her. Under the tight grip of her ‘mother’, Rapunzel fears she’ll never escape her tower until a young handsome thief named Flynn Rider (voiced by Zachery Levi) winds up literally stuck in her hair trying to escape with a stolen crown. They make a deal that if he takes her to see the floating lights, he will get his crown back, so the two make their way to the kingdom, unknowingly being followed by a horse whose determined to find and capture Flynn, and Gothel who is determined to keep Rapunzel to herself forever. For a return to Disney, this takes some good steps to reintroduce the formula while still adapting the source material to work within current times. It lacks a certain sense of punch that other Disney movies offer, but still manages to produce a pretty good movie that helped bring Disney back.

Being one of the first Disney princess movies in a long time, there was a distinct element between the two films; to provide several updates to the original formula while still sticking true to the familiar love and passion that came with the classic Disney films. In that respect, the movie’s story is fantastic. Not only is it a very effective update from the original German fairy tale, but every single element added to the tale only helps to flesh it out into its own thing and one that takes every advantage to stand out. The reasoning for the tower, hiding her away, the length and properties of her hair, each is given a brilliant reason for why it’s happening, and it begins the movie off to a great start. As it goes on, it continues going at a nice pace with everything fitting together very nicely to create a smooth and easy to understand story. Its emotionally engaging and calls back to the standard traditions of classic stories like Cinderella, while still feeling like an updated story that doesn’t ruin any of those elements. Originally intending to be a more satirical project in a similar vein to Shrek, it thankfully kept to its roots with Disney princess stories and retained the connectable story, charming tone and timeless appeal, even though this tone can still be felt within the comedy and even some of the character designs. The movie’s necessity to tread the lines of traditional Disney is unfortunately one of the main reasons that keeps it from featuring anything ‘wow’ worthy. While it handles its story very effectively and doesn’t stick out with anything necessarily bad, the movie was trying to bring favor back to the Disney fans while utilizing a new form of animation, so it decided to play it mostly safe. The movie doesn’t need anything outstanding for it to work, but it can explain what holds it back in comparison to other Disney classics that featured something that distinctly stood out as above the rest.

The characters fall into the expected roles that would come with this type of movie, but they do enough tweaking and adjusting so that they slightly break this mold while still sticking true to it. Rapunzel is a very likeable Disney princess; she has a lot of energy, a lot of relatability, she’s animated with a lot of personality, and her goal of simply enjoying the outside world is much more down-to-earth and new compared to princesses of old. Flynn is also pretty likeable and does a good job working off of Rapunzel as both genuinely gain something from the other. Both are written very well, the two have legitimate chemistry with the other that comes through good scenes of interaction, and both have time dedicated to the other that leaves both feeling changed by the end. Their voice actors, however, feel slightly off; the performances are still good, but it feels like neither of the actors have fully mastered their roles so sometimes the delivery can seem manufactured and slightly messy. The villain is in a similar boat; she has elements of a traditional Disney baddie and her scheme is actually pretty twisted even by their standards, but the balance of fear and humor done with her doesn’t feel effective and it leaves her feeling a bit mishandled even if the actresses is giving it her all. The horse, on the other hand,  is one of the best comic relief character Disney has ever had; his dedication to tracking down his thief is a drive that is similar to other famous goal-driven characters like Tommy Lee Jones from The Fugitive or Javert from Les Miserable. The animation on him is great and memorably expressive, he’s an amazing character, and easily one of the best take-aways from this movie. The rest of the comic relief is nothing special, but they thankfully don’t disrupt the movie too much, only coming in when they need too, and (to their credit), it’s the first movie in a while to make a mime funny so its gets that bonus.

One of the more defining elements of this movie was its 3D animation, which was something that Disney had never tackled before in their princess department. While it had failed previously with experiments like Chicken Little and Meet the Robinsons, this one was a major financial success for them and was arguably the movie that pushed for less 2D animated movies as Disney continued into their new renaissance. Strangely enough though, its one of the movies that doesn’t exactly benefit from its 3D animation. This style is best suited for creating increased levels of detail and for creating expansive and fleshed out environments. Whereas here, the movie is more styled to match the oil panting art done on canvases so realism isn’t really a focus, and the world of Corona is not that interesting to look at; the kingdom or environments they go to aren’t very interesting so its not using that to its advantages. From the way the film is composed, the shots are framed, even the story and characters feel like a 2D animated movie, but the film’s visual don’t match that. It was clearly made as a 2D animated idea but was transformed into 3D through production. With that said, its not bad to look at; it has very nice colors, the textures are a little flat but work nicely for the time, the motion of the characters, and especially on the hair, is very good, and thanks to some help from 2D animators, it still captures some beautifully simple emotional moments that only 2D can accomplish (particularly a moment between Rapunzel’s parents). The songs also strangely don’t work as well as they should; despite having famous Disney song writer, Alan Menken, compose them, something about the style and purpose of the music feels out-of-place. The ‘’radio-Disney’’ style to most of them doesn’t help with the movie’s tone and each one has poor transitions into them and lack a sense of uniqueness compared to other Disney melodies. But they still aren’t bad songs, they have nice melodies, fun lyrics and are sung fairly well.

Tangled helped shape the new age of Disney in a way that has, in many respects, had more lasting power than what Princess and the Frog did. With the 3D animation most likely being a big reasoning for why it was more popular, Tangled ironically his mirrored issue from what that movie had. While Princess and the Frog had a lot of great elements but was held down by a confusing poorly laid-out story, this movie has a fantastic story with brilliant updates, but feature little issues with everything else within that plot. It’s a movie that almost reaches the level of amazing, but every single element outside of the story suffers from a ‘’but…’’ after each positive. Even with that said, the movie will still give you a fantastic story update to a classic story that is worthy of its fame. One of the ones responsible for bringing Disney back, check it out and see this is a movie worth getting tangled up into.