She then goes to work for the Duke of Illyria, Orsino until she can sure up her situation. Believing her twin brother drowned and unsure of her safety in this strange land, she decides to take on the disguise of a boy and calls herself Cesario. Viola, the intelligent and resourceful heroine of the play, washes up on the shores of Illyria after a shipwreck. Even in this very funny monologue, there is sadness and heartache. It is often referred to as a ‘musical comedy’, but is as sad as it is funny-with many dark and strange moments. If the musical aspect is never more than “not bad” then that’s still more than good enough for me.Twelfth Night (or What You Will) is one of Shakespeare’s most popular and performed plays. This is a film that is simultaneously hysterically funny and, further in, deeply poignant. This is captured perfectly in another sequence of quick cuts in which she attempts to shove his limp, unconscious form into her wardrobe for safekeeping. Watching Ryder match wits with Rapunzel is one of the film’s many joys, since she just doesn’t know what to do with him. He is equal parts pragmatic and manipulative, but above all he is vain, and this stops him from really being smart. He is ultimately the film’s male protagonist, but he fills this role only when it becomes clear that merely being handsome isn’t enough to charm her into returning his loot. Ryder stands there and waits for her to get on with it. Rapunzel has been cooped up so long that she acts like an escaped mental patient when she’s finally free, and the film shows this through a series of quick cuts: ecstasy, regret, jubilation, sorrow. The film is a musical with okay music, but it really comes through with characterization and comedic timing. Ryder, unable to win her over with his handsomeness, reluctantly accepts. After knocking him unconscious with her frying pan, she hides his stolen treasure and uses it as collateral for a trip to the outside world. Rapunzel finally gets her chance to see the outside when an excessively handsome thief named Flynn Ryder (Zachary Levi) seeks refuge in her tower. Pascal is an inexplicable but welcome addition to the story, suggesting that Disney may have-after a long period in the wilderness-found its way back to its roots of characterization. The rest of the time she’s alone, however, except for a small pet chameleon named Pascal, who accompanies her through her daily routine. The hair loses its power if cut, however, so by the time grown-up Rapunzel is introduced she is attached to enough hair that she can let it down to the ground, allowing her adoptive mother/captor to come up and visit her. Rapunzel (voiced by Mandy Moore) is held captive in a tall and isolated tower by an old woman (Donna Murphy) who needs Rapunzel’s magic hair to maintain her youth. The trailers didn’t bode particularly well, and neither did the opening, which introduced the story in the same inexplicable, unnecessary and awkward narrative monologue used to introduce 2005’s awful “Chicken Little.” The plot stumbles and staggers at first, but after the initial heap of backstory the pacing smoothes out and the film begins to deliver. The source material is the fairy tale of Rapunzel, but there’s so much more going on here because the people bringing it to the screen are the computer-image people at Disney, which ended up having to buy Pixar a few years ago because nobody in the Magic Kingdom could remember how to make decent movies anymore. “Tangled” is, surprisingly, a hard movie to explain.
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