Barbie as Rapunzel Part 1: A Brief Introduction to Fairy Tales and Bitching About the Characters

I was never an "in-demand" babysitter.  


Shocking, I know. 


Maybe the parents had one of those teddy bear nanny cams and disapproved of the way I would whistle at their kids like I did with the dogs. 

See? Almost identical. I really have to squint to see any difference.

Movies were my go-to technique for managing tiny humans. The charges picked what they wanted to watch (thus I have seen every single Pokemon film) and a large percentage of the wee ones had been conditioned to favor pink and princesses. So there was this Rapunzel movie that I got to watch a lot and I want to start off by reviewing it. 

I didn't want to start with something too easy.
The Aborted Franchises will come later. Much later.

In my bored teenage years, I thought it was a good enough to kill an hour or so before the bedtime arguments began. I’m sure you all know what movie I’m talking about.

Now, fairy tales aren’t as straightforward as say, novels, when it comes to judging adaptations.They're old, so there's multiple versions based on whatever the local storyteller felt like throwing in for shits and giggles. And the public domain status means that they are constantly reinterpreted for a quick buck fresh take.

Tell me which one of these seems fairest of them all. 

Besides, Wikipedia tells me that Rapunzel in its Grimm form is already an adaptation, stemming from Charlotte-Rose De Caumont de La Force's 1698 tale Persinette (and possibly a few others). A truly original review is going to have to wait until I learn French. This discussion will work just fine with the Brothers Grimm version. 

What do you remember about Rapunzel?

A tower, a witch, a prince, and a girl who probably spends 94% of her day on hair hygiene.


This is not that story.

This is also not that story,
but that's a completely different blog post. 

When a book becomes a movie, the bulk of my moaning is usually boils down to what's been cut. After all, books can (theoretically) be as long as an author wants. The attention span of an average movie goer seems to max out somewhere around two and a half hours. Some trimming is required.

Sometimes a lot of trimming. 

With fairy tales, however, the problem is the reverse. The short length encourages additions, elaborations, and side plots. I'm not saying those things are automatically bad. Like how a skunk isn't automatically smelly.

Let's finally take a look at Barbie as Rapunzel, shall we?

Barbie, sea shore painter extraordinaire, has a problem. Her little sister, Kelly, when faced with a heap of fresh paint, gets performance anxiety and wants to be told what to paint. 

Let's not kid ourselves here. You're going to paint a rainbow.
Just accept it. 

I'm not sure why the traditional "once upon a time" need upgrading to a full framing device, but whatever. Like a naive camp counselor, Barbie has yet to meet a problem she can't solve by telling a story. Because when I need to motivate someone into trying something new I immediately think of ... Rapunzel? Sure.

"You know," recalls Barbie, "this reminds me of a story about a girl whose paintings saved her life." 

"The arts are important dammit! They save lives!" 

That was oddly ... threatening. Maybe Barbie takes the Tiger Mother approach to child-rearing. 


Okay, okay, that little bit of grounding realism over and we can move into the real story. 

Meet Rapunzel. Or rather, Barbie as Rapunzel. 

She's a painter while Original Rapunzel was a singer. That's not a change I can get too worked up about. When you're locked away from the world, multiple hobbies are probably necessary to preserve your sanity. I'd make a bigger fuss if she were a book-worm. It's a good thing that she's not because aside from that little detail, Rapunzel is basically Belle from Beauty and the Beast. A kind, caring, intelligent young woman who frequently vocalizes her hopes and dreams. She works towards a type of independence, in spite of a society that would rather she not. 

Pictured: Polite rebellion in pink. 

Well, that sounded dull and academic. Let me play film student for a moment.

The camera makes a point of entering this shot at the bottom of her permanently braided hair and slowly seeping up the length of it. Probably to distract from the fact that her hair only goes to her feet. 

You could maybe get to a second floor with that, if the window  had no lip.
And she laid on her back. And the prince had a ladder. And some rigging.

I've met people in real life with hair that long (mostly for religious reasons, but still). Stranger still, the movie never ever mentions her long but not-Rapunzel-long hair. And there is no reason for this character to have hair like this. It doesn't have any magical properties. 

Still not that post.

It might be okay, because this Rapunzel (as you may have already guessed) doesn't live in a tower. She lives in a manor hidden behind an invisible wall, spends her days slaving away at chores to keep the house in perfect shape. 

I'm just saying, for an evil manor it sure looks like a Malibu beach house.
I wonder if you could buy this as a playhouse? 

The manor belongs to Gothel. 

Mother Gothel in the original tale is a pretty intriguing villain. She was a witch who took Rapunzel as her own daughter as payment for some rampion (the whole point of the name Rapunzel, actually) her birth parents stole.

At least it wasn't artichoke? 

But once Gothel had Rapunzel, she was apparently a kind and loving mother. The problems started cropping up when her little girl started noticing boys - basically a crazy helicopter parent. What I'm saying is there was a foundation for an intriguing and nuanced character. What the movie uses is a carbon copy of the stepmother from Cinderella.

Didn't you know weasel tail face masks ensure a restful slumber?

And then there's the Prince. The plot does this thing where it delays naming his royal highness so that Rapunzel can honestly claim she doesn't know who he is. But of course he's the prince. He's the only eligible male that she meets in the entire movie. 

Hello Prince Stefan. Do you mind if I call you Prince Basic. I swear to god, I had to keep looking up his name because this ponce may as well not here at all.   He just wanders around and has stilted conversation with everyone. 

"Hello favored brother, how doth you fair on this fine summer's eve?"
 - Still less cringe-worthy than the actual writing for this scene. 

Stefan and Rapunzel also have a ridiculously tiny amount of screen time together for two characters that end up marrying. So hey, finally something that's accurate to the original story.

So...you like to paint?

I'm going to end this part of the review soon, but there's only last thing I want to touch on - sidekicks.

The original sidekicks? 

Honestly, I can't think of a Disney main character who does come with a few extra hangers-on. Price of fame I guess. 

It was only the beginning. 

But dear God, do they over-do it in this movie.

Gothel, Rapunzel, and Prince Stefan all come with their own groupies.The effect is a landslide of side characters that range from pointless to annoying. At best, they have slightly interesting side plots, like Penelope and her Dad. At worst, it's really obvious that the producers wanted to have a Tommy doll.

Rapunzel gets Penelope, the dragon with performance anxiety worried about pleasing her father, and Hugo, the annoying fluff ball. 90% of their conversations is snark. 

Gothel gets Otto, the standard "evil" weasel, and Hugo, Penelope's father. 

Prince Stefan get his father, stolen straight from the cheerful, useless, chubby royalty school of character design. 

Remind you of anyone? 

There's also Tommy, Melody, Lorena, Katrina, and their horse Botticelli (not shown). Altogether about as useful as tits on a boar.

And award for biggest waste of animation goes to....

Did they think the kids watching this need an audience surrogate? Because that's probably a little hard for characters that spend less than seven minutes on-screen to accomplish. And when I talk about awkward, stilted dialogue it's always with these four. 

Small animated children, look at your life, look at your word choices.  

Part 2 coming soon! Maybe I actually get to the plot soon. 

Part 2 can be found here.