Movie Review: Disney's "Tangled"

I just watched what could have been, and *ALMOST* was, the best Disney movie I've ever seen. "Tangled", a retelling of the Rapunzel story, came close to being something really special before a rushed and contrived ending spoiled it.

First the good points:

In Rapunzel, we have a sweet, confident, and capable heroine. She paints, sings, plays chess, studies geometry, does her own cleaning and baking, and dreams ardently of the future.

While sometimes pretty campy (instantly redeeming a nest full of criminals by invoking their secret dreams?), the movie is full of great characters, images and scenes. It's full of references to other Disney films, particularly "The Emperor's New Groove".

There are some wonderful scenes of joy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=chppF5jqKNw#t=94s

And of the tangled excitement and anxiety of growing up:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVovNi55HrU

But I have one huge complaint:

Mother Gothel, the witch who kidnaps and raises Rapunzel, is as close to a morally ambiguous character as I've ever seen from Disney. In fact, for the first 90% of the movie, she is truly ambiguous. She kidnaps Rapunzel for the youth-sustaining qualities of her hair, but it is clear that in raising the child, the witch has come to love her. Not as much as she loves the eternal youth that Rapunzel grants, but as much as she can. There's an exchange that occurs 2 or 3 times in the movie, Mother Gothel: I love you. Rapunzel: I love you more. Mother Gothel: I love you most. The first two statements are true, it's only the third that's a lie. Yes she is manipulative, self-serving and condescending with a barbed sense of humor, but those are human qualities, not evil ones. She locks Rapunzel away in a tower to horde her magic, but she stocks the tower with every supply and activity Rapunzel could want. She brings ingredients to cook Rapunzel's favorite supper, she sets out on a 3-day journey to get a particular paint that Rapunzel favors. None of these are necessary to maintain the magic of the hair, they are the acts of a mother who loves her daughter and wants her to be happy, so long as it doesn't require that mother to sacrifice her youth.

In order to get Mother Gothel out of the way so that Rapunzel can reunite with her biological parents and live happily ever after, Disney radically alters her character and Rapunzel's. Until this point, Mother Gothel used manipulation and conniving to prevent Rapunzel's leaving the tower and then to lure her back when she does leave. Here she abandons cunning and resorts to brutal violence, stabbing Eugene, Rapunzel's love, in the belly with a knife. Leaving aside how shocking this is in a Disney movie, it is completely out of character! Rapunzel's sweet little chameleon friend then trips Gothel with Rapunzel's hair, causing her to fall from the tower, presumably to her death. Rapunzel, aside from a gasp, is completely unaffected by the death of the mother she has loved for 18 years. She saves her beloved, is reunited with her biological parents, and lives happily ever after, presumably without another thought of the mother killed by her friend. We are presumably to understand that murder is okay, as long as the victim is an ugly witch. That love redeems and endures, except not for Mother Gothel.

In the end, I was terribly disappointed. There was absolutely no need for the hack job of an ending. A much deeper and more interesting story could have been told with just a little more creativity. Alas, perhaps that's not what we watch Disney for. Perhaps the simple black and white is what viewers want, but I think a real opportunity was missed here.