Tangled

[CaledonianGonzo]

As a sucker, more-or-less, for Walt Disney Feature Animation I was always in the target market for Tangled/Rapunzel, but I was still taken aback by how much I enjoyed it.  There's a period of about half-an-hour's duration in the middle of the movie where I genuinely felt like I was watching the most entertaining movie I'd ever seen.  It doesn't quite sustain that peak of perfection until the end, but hot damn if it wasn't the best film I've seen in the cinema for what's felt like an absolute age.

Maximus the horse is a scene-stealer, but the whole effort is just fecking hilarious.  It's a cert that I won't laugh more at any other so-called comedy in the cinema this year.

[SavageHedgehog]

Haven't seen it, but very much want to some time. I think a lot of people have been put off by the Shrek-tinged marketing, which I've heard is very misleading.

I do wonder how it cost something like $260million though

[CaledonianGonzo]

Haven't seen it, but very much want to some time. I think a lot of people have been put off by the Shrek-tinged marketing, which I've heard is very misleading.

I do wonder how it cost something like $260million though

Given my dislike of the Shrek series I'm probably the wrong person to comment, but to me it comes at fairytales from a sincere viewpoint, rather than Dreamworks' snide/skewed take.  A lot of the humour is slapstick-y, but it comes from design and character, rather than fart jokes and puns.  It feels like it's been made by people who love animation as an artform and Disney fairytales as a genre, rather than by unemployed hacks from the National Lampoon.

As for the cost, I don't have a clue about this sort of thing really, but it at least looks like the money's up there on the screen.  It's blimming gorgeous, which is more than I get from the snippets I see of cheapie CG animation (Gnomeo & Juliet, for example).  It's just.....lush.

[Second Burner]

I took my 5 year old son to see this.  Very enjoyable, very Disney!

[Mister Six]

Hmm. The trailers for this were uniformly awful but I'll give it a whirl on your recommendation alone. I was never a fan of the Shrek series so Dreamworks resolutely failed to amuse (save for an early blip with Antz) until the ace Bee Movie and Kung Fu Panda. I thought that Cloudy With a Change of Meatballs - easily the best non-Pixar CGI film I've seen[nb]Actually considerably better than any of theirs if you rate a film entirely on laughs.[/nb] - was one of theirs, but now I know it's not I'll have to downgrade my expectations a step before I go see this one (to be fair I haven't seen a Dreamworks flick since Kung Fu Panda, not even the dragon one, so maybe I've missed out on a series of increasingly great flicks... Shreks excepted, of course).

[Zero Gravitas]

^ The dreamworks style-theft in the adverts seems to have worked too well.

Nostalgia Chick (http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/thedudette/nostalgia-chick) did a great series on Disney vs Dreamworks at the end of last year that mentions the strange turnabout

[Harpo Speaks]

I thought that Cloudy With a Change of Meatballs - easily the best non-Pixar CGI film I've seen[nb]Actually considerably better than any of theirs if you rate a film entirely on laughs

I was going to start a thread on 'Cloudy...', I saw it a couple of weeks ago and was really impressed, some genuinely funny moments in there. Seems to have slipped under the radar a bit.

[CaledonianGonzo]

not even the dragon one

Credit where it's due to How To Train Your Dragon - I thought it was splendid, though it's the work of the bloke who directed Lilo & Stitch for Disney, which I really need to do a write-up for for the 'Recent Films Due A Reappraisal' thread as it's seriously great.

But yes, as ZG points out, Tangled is a straight-down the-line Walt Disney animation, not a Dreamworks production.

[Mister Six]

^ The dreamworks style-theft in the adverts seems to have worked too well.

Nostalgia Chick (http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/thedudette/nostalgia-chick) did a great series on Disney vs Dreamworks at the end of last year that mentions the strange turnabout

GOD. She might have a point but I'm having trouble getting past her awful, awful delivery and shit jokes.

[Mister Six]

Credit where it's due to How To Train Your Dragon - I thought it was splendid, though it's the work of the bloke who directed Lilo & Stitch for Disney, which I really need to do a write-up for for the 'Recent Films Due A Reappraisal' thread as it's seriously great.

But yes, as ZG points out, Tangled is a straight-down the-line Walt Disney animation, not a Dreamworks production.

Yeah, I heard good things about it, but it came out at a time when I was horrendously overworked and didn't want to spend what little free time I had in a cinema watching a chldren's film while surrounded by cunts talking loudly on their mobile phones (Dubai, you see).

[madhair60]

I was going to start a thread on 'Cloudy...', I saw it a couple of weeks ago and was really impressed, some genuinely funny moments in there. Seems to have slipped under the radar a bit.

Do it!  It's a brilliant, brilliant film.

[SavageHedgehog]

To be fair I do think Dreamworks' output has improved considerably in the last few years. Monsters Vs. Aliens and Megamind may not be new classics, but they are entertaining and imaginative films which successfully pull off things some of their live action contemporaries don't manage [nb]Making the extra couple of pounds for the 3-D glasses worthwhile for one thing[/nb]. Even Shrekman Forever was a considerable improvement over the other sequels. Dreamworks were overpraised for their "hipness" and "irrelavance" in their early days, now they're being too quickly dismissed for much the same thing.

And yes, Cloudy is great (although it gets a little overwhelming towards the end). I really liked the very "cartoony" design of the characters and their world, and it's quite moving at times too.

[Waking Life]

I enjoyed this, but I actually preferred The Princess & The Frog from last year.  I'm not sure how closely this follows Rapunzel (I don't remember it well), but I was pleasantly surprised that I wasn't sure what was going to happen (aside from the obvious twists).

Wasn't too keen on some of the songs, although a lot of the reviews are of the opposite opinion.

[Mister Six]

"irrelavance"

Irreverence.


_Sorry.

[SavageHedgehog]

Nah, it's a fair cop.

[Norton Canes]

We went to see some Saturday morning flick with the kids a couple of weeks ago (I think it was Marmaduke) and instead of a standard trailer for Tangled, with all the 'best' bits and funny lines quick-cut together, they just showed a complete ten minute sequence from the film, straight through. And it was far more effective than a trailer, because before long you were completely immersed in it, and when it suddenly came to a halt, you had almost completely forgotten that it was only supposed to be a short excerpt. It was almost as if withdrawl symptoms had set it, or you had been cheated from seeing the rest, and so became desperate to watch the whole thing. So if I was a major studio boss, I would cancel all trailer editing forthwith, and show extended sequences from the films instead. 

[Mister Six]

Was it not just that the shitness of Marmaduke made it look good by comparison?

[small_world]

Maximus the horse.... The best thing in any film this year without a doubt. (apart from 'those' scenes in Black Swan)
It's just the facial expressions and movement. Amazingly well done.
The rest of the film was alright, I'm not keen on all those songs, but they didn't last too long and the witch's was pretty good.
Looked really good as well.