TANGLED - lovely!

So the first thing to do is forget the Brothers Grimm tale of Rapunzel, the peasant girl taken by the witch next door in exchange for the herbs that saved her mother's life. Locked in a tower as she reached puberty, Rapunzel was knocked up by a passing Prince, enchanted by her voice, but cast out by the witch in disgust. Of course, there was a happy ending. The Prince, blinded on thorns by the scheming witch, wanders into Rapunzel, who's tears of sadness heal his sight, and he takes her to be his princess.

Naturally, in Disney's version of the tale, we can't have a naive girl fall pregnant, and we can't have something as simplistic as true love conquering blindness. Moreover, in the post-modern, post-Shrek age of animation, we have to play up the modern social angle. Rapunzel is now a captured Princess who falls for a commoner (just as in SHREK and THE KING'S SPEECH - what is with it Hollywood's obsession with royals falling for commoners?) and while the teen rebellion survives, it is now cast less as a tale of hidden puberty than of fighting for independence from an over-bearing manipulative mother. Rapunzel is less a fairy-tale than an animated version of THE FIGHTER! (Not to mention the fact that she really can handle herself!) Every musical number borders on pastiche - from Riverdance style folk dances, to Mother Gothel's Big Momma Morton inspired "Mother Knows Best". There are quotations from cinema, there's teen-angst slang, there's "talk to the hand" attitude from the side-kick comedy chameleon. Basically, this movie may be a fairy tale about an innocent girl, but it's very very knowing indeed.

Still, for all that, I rather enjoyed it! Mandy Moore's Rapunzel is charming; Zachary Levi's handsome commoner, Flynn, is very witty; Donna Murphy's Mother Gothel is absolutely brilliantly manipulative, and I simply LOVED the blood-hound horse, Maximilian! There was annoyingly modern verbal humour, yes, but even better, good old-fashioned slapstick humour and a wonderfully old-fashioned visual look to the film. It may have been made on computers, but it feels a lot more painterly than recent films, and has the lush colours, deep woods and medieval castles of SNOW WHITE. The 3D added nothing, and some of the songs were soupy, but overall, TANGLED was well worth watching. I was genuinely engaged by the movie, and moved by its ending. So, after the serious mis-step with BOLT 3D, and the side-track into the American dream with THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG, I can honestly and gladly say that Disney is back to what it does best: fairytales. Beautifully drawn, moving, funny fairy-tales.

TANGLED was released last year in the US, Canada, Israel, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Russia, Singapore, Indonesia, Italy, Mexico, Poland, Venezuela, Belgium, Egypt, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Hungary, Kuwait, Bulgaria, Austria, Germany, Portugal, Slovakia, Ukraine, Australia, Turkey and Chile. It was released last month in Croatia, Argentina, Greece, New Zealand, Brazil, Panama, Romania, Serbia, Peru, Estonia, Iceland, India, Slovenia, Ireland, Lithuania and the UK. It opens this weekend in Denmark, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Norway, Spain and Finland. It opens on February 11th in Finland and on March 12th in Japan. It has been nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Song.

Random DVD Round-Up 4 - SOUTHLAND TALES

SOUTHLAND TALES is Richard Kelly's satire on post 9-11 US society. It's a paranoid fantasy about a USA destroyed by the four things: terrorism; the government's anti-liberal response to it; the vulgarity of popular culture; and environment degradation. Sadly, Kelly isn't up to synthesising all these concerns into a definitive take on contemporary angst. Rather, he has created an ambitious, fleetingly interesting, but overwhelmingly baggy, messy and pretentious film.

The movie is a rag-bag of inter-twining stories all played out in Kelly's alternate USA in 2008. A terrorist nuclear attack has wiped out Texas and prompted the US government to turn the US into a police state. Meanwhile, the energy crisis has been solved by a company that harnesses wave power to produce energy, the side-effect of which is to slow down the rotation of the earth and cause a warp in the space-time continuum. Against this back-drop we focus on three characters. The Rock plays a Schwarzenegger-like actor suffering from amnesia, trying to make sense of it all. He's being exploited by a porn star turned cultural commentator, Krysta Now (Sarah Michelle Gellar). Meanwhile, Seann William Scott plays a police officer, on the trail of Marxist radicals and his alternate self. All these characters are being messed up warps in the space-time continuum caused by environmental degradation.

The resulting film is a mess. And not in the way that Terry Gilliam's BRAZIL is a mess, but touched by genius, and therefore a cult film. SOUTHLAND TALES is misconceived. "State of the nation" content is better suited to the format of the novel. Novels like THE BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES or VANITY FAIR can take their time and build up a coherent narrative. My proposition is that the feature film is fundamentally unsuited to this kind of artistic endeavour.

SOUTHLAND TALES played Cannes 2006 to a disastrous reception. It was then put on extremely limited release in the UK and US in winter 2007. It is available on DVD in the theatrical release cut.

LICENSE TO WED saps my precious bodily fluids

Jesus Tap-Dancing Christ! Do these people realise that it is a PRIVILEGE to be able to make a movie? That thousands of imaginative, talented kids DREAM of these kind of production budgets and distribution deals? Do these guys even know the aggregate economic output WASTED by all us poor fools who've had to PAY to have our precious bodily fluids sapped by this creepy little TURD of a movie?

Be very clear. This movie sucks ass. This should not be a surprise. The writers have written nothing of note before. The director has done some TV and that's it. The plot is basically empty. Two blandly beautiful kids have to attend "Reverend Frank's" pre-marital counselling class before he'll marry them. In other words, this is a vehicle for Robin Williams' peculiar brand of brash, irritating, re-hashed humour. And, personally, I haven't found Williams funny since 1987.

LICENSE TO WED is on already polluting mutliplex screens in the US, Greece, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Australia, Hong Kong, Malysia, New Zealand, Mexico, Spain, the UK, the Netherlands, Singapore, Belgium, Egypt, France, Argentina and Italy. It opens next weekend in Germany, Brazil and Iceland. It sleazes its way into Israel and Japan in September and into Norway in October 2007.

BECAUSE I SAID SO - arguably racist, definitely piss-poor

The makers of BECAUSE I SAID SO should go and sit in a corner and think very carefully about what they have done. It beggars belief that this woefully under-written, uninspired romantic-comedy was directed by the man who gave us the acerbic cult classic, HEATHERS. But then again, it is co-written by the woman who foisted I AM SAM onto an uncaring world. Diane Keaton embarasses herself in a farce unworthy of her undoubted comedic talents and whether or not Mandy Moore has true acting chops, she is wasted here. The plot, such as it is, involves a creepily intrusive mother setting up her daughter with some racially profiled dates.

All I can say is, thank god MUSIC AND LYRICS is also out this week: it gives those of us who have faith in the romantic-comedy genre something to cling on to.

BECAUSE I SAID SO is on release in the US, Italy and the UK. It opens in Argentina on March 8th, in Brazil on March 23rd, in Iceland and Turkey on April 13th, in Finland on April 20th and in Belgium on August 8th.

AMERICAN DREAMZ - More hit than miss, but still not brilliant

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