Movie Review: Tangled

Tangled is based on Rapunzel by the Brothers Grimm, like with a lot of Disney stories it has been given a more modern make over, the Princess this time being more Mr Miagi than Damsel in distress, The Hair has almost been given a life of it’s own with Rapunzel using it like Indian Jones handles a whip to be both a source of transportation and a weapon – although for obvious reasons of plausibility the hair does seem to be of differing lengths throughout the film. The story is very much Disney and from the very start you work out what is going to happen but then it is a Disney so it doesn’t take away from the charm. As with most child based releases these days there is obviously a “cute” character, this time a Chameleon called Pascal – coming to a lunchbox near you soon. However this Pascal is actually quite funny so not just another JarJar Binks.

Disney have once again foregone the star packed voice lists of Dreamworks and Fox choosing instead lesser known stars (Although not to take anything away from them.) Mandy Moore – More known as a singer than an actor and Zachary Levi – The guy from Chuck. The singing therefore sounds much more natural to the stars and in keeping with the traditional Disney animations feature as set pieces throughout the film. Supporting talent is provided by Ron Pearlman and Brad Garratt (The brother from “Everybody loves Raymond”, although to me he will always be Trypticon from Transformers.)

The film is fun enough to keep children amused but funny enough to entertain adults, and when your sitting down for a half term movie is there anything else you require?

Movie Review: Season of the Witch

Missed a few weeks of blogging again, leaving me with a backlog of Movies to review, The first one is Season of the Witch which I have to admit I have thought about not reviewing as I would much rather get straight into the second review I will be putting up today Black Swan, But if I miss Season of the Witch I am worried I would never come back to it.

I don’t want you to get the impression from this that Season of the Witch is a bad movie (It is, but you should pick that up from the review instead.) To be honest to call it a bad movie would probably be unfair, it was not supposed to be an Oscar winner but coming sandwiched between Oscar favourite The Kings Speech and the very well made Black Swan the inadequacies of this medieval adventure are only too obvious.

The story starts with a demonstration of the persecution of some witches, obviously much to the surprise of the priest carrying out the execution one of them turns out to be a real witch, we then cut to our two heroes (Nick Cage and Ron Pearlman) they are knights in the crusades, which seem to stretch from the Arctic to the Equator as they follow the commands of a clearly insane religious leader, they wake up and realise that they may not be doing gods work and walk away from the army.

This is all essential set up for the actual story which sees the two Heroes disillusioned with the Church finding themselves once again serving them as they escort the witch to a monastery where she can be put on trial for witch craft, there is the usual assortment of escorts along with the two main stars – The Older War Haggard Guard, The Young Inexperienced yet expert Swordsman and the cowardly conman forced to help in return for release from the stocks. The script and storylines are no more original than their choice of companions.

For me this story is made by Ron Pearlman, I should admit that I am a massive Ron Pearlman fan so this was always a bit of a given, but he is great in this film playing the usual “Pearlman” role (The Hard guy who is never endingly loyal.) Cage on the other hand whose acting talent is often unfairly questioned once again plays the same role this could easily be a scene from a flash back in the Sorcerers Apprentice or Ghost Rider the characters are ostensibly the same in each.

All that said the film is not really bad until the end when everything goes very over the top, but if by the time it arrives you are surprised then you really must not have been paying attention.