Tangled - Alan Menken

I have, it must be said, been listening to a lot of musical theatre of late. However, for all the Sondheim I've devoured, I still come back to Alan Menken's classic efforts for Disney more often than not, notably Beauty and the Beast which is still his high water mark. However, fairytales have been too subverted in the intervening years (Shrek, Enchanted and all that) for the kids of 2010 to take them in quite the same way (although my friend's 3 year old loves the classic Disney films as much as contemporary Pixar films, mainly through not being old enough to get Shrek etc) but Disney's CGI division have had another stab at a fairytale with Rapunzel. Sorry, Tangled. It's all about the hair...

As a stunningly unbiased fan, I couldn't wait to hear Menken's music for Tangled but... ugh... but. Hmmm. It's not that it's bad, as such, just, it's missing something. Whether it's expectations (i.e. I want another Belle or Be Our Guest or Something There) or simply that the producers didn't want the songs to dominate, the entries here are somewhat insubstantial and the tunes surprisingly unmemorable. Be Our Guest is memorable enough to drive you to drink, but only I've Got a Dream comes close to ingratiating itself, but it's the humorous lyrics of Glenn Slater that are most memorable. The other major song players, When Will My Life Begin and Mother Knows Best, suffer from never really taking flight. Mother Knows Best sounds far too much like Ursula from The Little Mermaid and When Will My Life Begin is too fragmented (two reprises, no less) to have the necessary impact.

I See the Light is a lovely ballad, and probably a shoe in for an Oscar nomination, but it's no Whole New World or Beauty and the Beast. Menken's underscore is perhaps the best of the album being typically well wrought with some delightful daring do in Flynn Wanted and the requisite romance and some folksy dance music in Kingdom Dance. It is almost a shame he doesn't score more non-musical films, his melodic sense (even in something like this where the tunes aren't as memorable as his best) wins out, plus he's not ashamed to score it a bit more like a cartoon. There's nothing wrong doing it like that, especially when the musical twists and turns are so expertly handled. Sometimes it's nice to have some Korngoldian intricacy instead of a modern, broad brush approach.

One reviewer of the film commented that Disney seem to feel obligated to make "princess" movies (compared to Pixar who go off in all sorts of interesting directions) and so are continuing this with Tangled. However, they want the knowing aspects of contemporary animated films in there too and it feels like they wanted songs, but nothing that will intrude too much; "if the songs are brief enough, the kids might not notice," kinda thing. They don't have to do much more than be pit stops for the characters to tell them a bit about themselves, rather than actually carry the story along. Yes, I'll blame the filmmakers for Menken coming up a little short on this occasion, but as with all the finest composers working today, Menken's less than top rate is still plenty above most composer's best efforts and still worthy of a recommendation.


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