Netflix Review: Tangled

This movie was adorable! I highly recommend it to anyone who likes Disney/Pixar movies.

As with all Disney movies that are based on Grimm Brothers' Fairy Tales, it deviates from the original, effed-up story so as not to frighten the childrens. Here is the rundown of how the story of Rapunzel was originally written.

Once upon a time, a dude and his wife (let's call them Nigel and Cynthia) lived in a cottage in Germany or something. They really wanted a baby, but TTC as they may, Cynthia never got knocked up. 

Well apparently, they lived next-door to a sorceress who was really into gardening. We'll call her Martha. Cynthia looked into Martha's magic garden and thought the stuff over there looked really tasty, especially some stuff called rampion.  

Behold, rampion.

Yeah, I had never heard of it, either. But I guess in Fairytaleland, it's a popular thing to grow in magical gardens, and is also quite delicious. It must have been delicious, because Cynthia started freaking out because she wanted some soooooo bad, and she grabbed Nigel and was like "oh em gee I needs me some rampion or I'm a seriously die."

Well, since Nigel was a super nice guy and loved Cynthia and really wanted her to be happy, he agreed to sneak into Martha's magical garden and steal some rampion. So under cover of darkness and while wearing his ninja costume, Nigel jacked some rampion from Martha. Cynthia made it into a salad and nommed the shit out of it, and liked it so much that she decided she needed EVEN MOAR.

Nigel still loved Cynthia and still wanted her to be happy, so he snuck over to Martha's again to steal more rampion. But Martha had noticed her missing rampion and was wise to Nigel's banditry, so she was waiting for him. As he went to pull up more rampion, Martha jumped out from behind a tree and was all, "Gotcha, bitch!" 

Nigel started screaming and apologizing and begging Martha not to turn him into a frog. He explained that his wife needed the rampion or she was going to simply roll over and die, and he was just trying to make his wife happy. Well Martha felt sorry for Nigel, and she made a deal with him.

"Nigel," said Martha. "You seem like a nice guy, so here's what I'm going to do for you. You can take all the rampion you can carry to your crazy wife. The catch is that I want the baby she's going to eventually have. Don't worry; I'll treat the baby really nice and she'll be well taken care of." 

Nigel was scared shitless, so he agreed to everything Martha said. He took the rampion back to Cynthia, who jammed it all in her face. As Martha had predicted, Cynthia soon got preggo, and in a few months, she gave birth to a cute baby girl. Before the afterbirth was even cooled, Martha appeared and took the baby, whom she named Rapunzel after the rampion that Cynthia had eaten. 

Rapunzel lived with Martha for a while. When Rapunzel was a belligerent teenager, Martha locked her ass up in a tower with no doors or stairs or anything (wouldn't we all like to lock our snotty teenagers up in towers with no exit?). There was just one window at the very top of the tower and the only way to get up there was to climb up Rapunzel's hair, which was crazy long and probably took about a week to shampoo. 

One day, the King's son (we'll call him Prince Howard) was riding his horse around in the middle of freakin' nowhere, and he came upon Rapunzel's tower. Since he's a sneaky bastard, he hid in the bushes while Martha called up to Rapunzel and told her to lower her hair. Down the hair came, and Martha was whisked up to the top of the tower. 

Prince Howard must have been really bored, or else his kingdom was full of really ugly girls, because he stuck around and waited for Martha to leave and then called up to have Rapunzel lift him into the tower. Rapunzel either a) had a hearing problem and couldn't discern pitch, or b) had never been told to not let strange dudes into her tower, because she pulled Howard right up. 

Well Rapunzel and Howard hit it off immediately, and they decided to run away together. Rapunzel was kind of stuck, though, so she told Howard to bring a skein of silk with him every time he visited her, and she would weave a ladder out of the silk. He said he totally would, and off he went. 

Prince Howard sneaked to Rapunzel's tower every night, because Martha came during the day. One day after several weeks of seeing Howard in secret, Rapunzel made a dire mistake. 

Martha came up to the tower and called for Rapunzel to let down her hair, which she did. Martha grabbed onto the hair and Rapunzel hoisted her up, and when Martha reached the top, Rapunzel said, "Hot diggity, are you fat or what? I hoist Howard up in like, two seconds, but it takes me forever to haul your fat ass up here."

Martha was taken aback. First of all, she followed her Weight Watchers diet to the letter, and she did her Jane Fonda workout three times a week, so there was no freakin' way she was too fat. And secondly... "Who the hell is Howard?!"

Understandably upset, Martha punished Rapunzel for being mean and also for being a skank and having boys in her tower. She cut Rapunzel's hair off and then sent her to live in the desert, where she would have to think deeply about what she had done.

Then Martha went back to the tower and waited for Howard to return. When he did and called for Rapunzel, Martha dropped down the hair she had cut from Rapunzel and let Howard climb it. When he got to the top, he was expecting to see Rapunzel but he saw Martha instead. He was so freaked out by what he saw that he flung himself out of the tower. He survived the fall, but he landed in some thorny bushes and the thorns done poked his eyes right out.

Howard wandered around for years, blind. He eventually wandered to the desert where Rapunzel lived, and they reunited. She cried tears that fell into his eyes, and since she's suddenly magical or something, her tears repaired his eyes and he could see again. With his vision returned, he took Rapunzel back to his castle and they got married and lived happily ever after.

Martha sold Rapunzel's hair to a wig-maker and retired to Jamaica, where she grew another magical garden that had much less rampion and much more reefer.

The original story of Rapunzel is one of the less-screwed-up Grimm Brothers tales. If you want to be freaked out, check out Sleeping Beauty (date rape!) or Cinderella (domestic abuse!). Hans Christian Andersen's telling of the Little Mermaid involves suicide and soulless sea creatures.

Tangled was kind of true to the original, only less eye-gouging and no rampion. Plus, there's an adorable chameleon pet to enjoy. I give it two thumbs up.