24 Days of Christmas – Family Tradition Edition

I have only repeated two movies since last year, even though it’s been very tempting to pull out some old favorites (I miss you, Elf! See you next year!). Those two repeats were my essential movies. Every year, the Christmas season begins with Love, Actually, and ends when my whole family gets together to watch The Muppets Christmas Carol. And if one year I missed Love, Actually, I’d probably feel sad, but I’d get over it. If I missed the Muppets, it wouldn’t feel like Christmas. Considering Muppets came out in 1992 (when we saw it in theaters) and probably came out on VHS by the next Christmas, I can estimate that I’ve seen this movie at least 19 times. My brother and I sing along to every song (and find it near impossible not to quote along with every line). Each person has their personal favorite parts (and least favorite, many times overlapping). It is as much a part of my Christmas season as trees, presents and inappropriately drunk relatives (just kidding, relatives). So I realize I’m not exactly impartial when I say that The Muppets Christmas Carol is not only the best version of the Christmas Carol, but probably the best Christmas movie period. Your favorite Christmas movie, like your favorite member of ‘NSync, says a lot more about you as a person than it does about the relative quality of your options*. I realize this, and therefore trying to convince you that The Muppet Christmas Carol is better, objectively, than whatever movie your family gobbed onto is probably a fool’s errand, but here goes nothing:

The Muppets Christmas Carol takes the themes of A Christmas Carol (love, kindness, redemption, tragedy, poverty) and translates them beautifully into its chosen motifs (Muppets, mainly). In performing this miraculous translation of dry British drama to the colorful, musical world of The Muppets, it manages to maintain the integrity and power of the original work while also providing new levels of Christmassy joy. A lot of adaptations, especially those aimed at children, soften the themes or lose the metaphor, but the Muppets heighten that drama with a fiery performance by Michael Caine and a healthy helping of astute observational humor.

Which brings us to my second point – it’s really funny. Not that I’d expect anything less from a Muppet movie that doesn’t have the word “Space” in the title, but The Muppets Christmas Carol has all the wit, joy, and over the top puniness that have made the Muppets classics for years.

Even the casting of the Muppets within the piece serves dual functions to the metaphor of the story and the humor of it (take, for example, Fozzy the Bear as Fozziwig. In the original text, Fozziwig is a kindhearted, semi-incompetent businessman whose early kindness towards Scrooge helps to melt his heart. The Muppets version casts Fozzy the Bear, a kindhearted, semi-incompetent jokester whose overwhelming kindness and goofiness is so persistent it can’t help but melt your heart. This makes his casting both funny and effective, since it automatically creates a wealth of characterization around Fozziwig without the movie needing to spell it out).

And to my third – The Muppets Christmas Carol is a really awesome musical, with numbers that range from beautifully evocative (“One More Sleep ‘Til Christmas” marvelously conjures the joy of the night before Christmas morning) to deeply piercing (the very funny and very trenchant “There Goes Mr. Humbug” sums up Scrooge more effectively than any amount of Gonzo-narration could) to the really joyful (the movie ending “Thankful Heart”). In true Muppet fashion, these songs are witty, well-composed, and perfectly suited to the movie.

And of course the fourth reason why The Muppets Christmas Carol is the best Christmas movie ever—because it’s mine. Our traditions, as I’ve observed time and again during this experiment, are often nonsensical and arbitrary, but they’re ours. We give them power because we believe that they mean something. And when our traditions fill us with joy and a sense that we should try and be a little better towards the rest of the world? Well then they’re worthwhile ones. That, more than anything, has been the meaning of the plethora of Christmas movies I’ve indulged in this year. Some of them were crappy (I’m looking at you, Christmas Cupid), and some were Jewish, and some were animated, but all of them were obsessed with the idea that this time of year, regardless of religion, wealth or life status, can be magical. Not necessarily because it was the time that Jesus was born (in fact, as previously noted, only a few of the movies even so much as mentioned the J-man), or because it was the time of the Maccabees, or because we give each other presents, but because we imbue the end of the year with a meaning that makes it transcend a date on the calendar. Like family, whether the one you're born with or the one you create or the friends you surround yourself with, Christmas time means a lot to us because we say it does.

The Muppets Christmas Carol is the perfect season topper not just because it is the best (although it is), but because my family and I have decided it’s the best, so every joke, every song, every moment is imbued with that much more magic and joy. And in the age after Santa stopped delivering our presents, and cookies started reminding us of diabetes more than Christmas cheer, it’s the magic we create with the people we love that matters**.

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS: 
• 99% Watch: If this isn’t the same as when Ron Paul was asked that question about letting the 30-year-old with no health insurance die – “If they’d rather die [than go to the prisons or poor houses] they’d better do it, and decrease the surplus population!”

 • Additional 99% Watch: Good Scrooge sings, “and a promise to share the wealth.” Time to pepper spray him.

• Gonzo is still my favorite Muppet (by far), but I never get tired of Rizzo’s hilarious non sequiturs.

• Is it sad that the ghost of Christmas Future STILL terrifies me? Yes, probably.

*False. The best member of NSync is and was Justin Timberlake. But I like metaphor, so go with it.


**Aww, shut up Rachael, say something pithy and ironic: presents don’t suck either.

24 Days of Christmas- Merry Christmas, Here’s Some AIDS Installment

As a regular movie, Rent doesn't exactly have classic status. With Chris Columbus’ stagey direction and lack of personal voice, Rent isn’t even a particularly good adaptation of the Broadway musical from which it’s based. The actors are all too old for their parts. The film lacks cinematic urgency. And the once-cutting-edge play about a group of New York bohemians turns into a surprisingly conventional piece of “we should all love each other” fluff. But as a Christmas movie, Rent is kind of great.

The story of a make-shift family’s heartbreak and hope is exactly the kind of crap that Christmas movies were made for. The momentary triumphs, abject horror, and desperate yearning for meaning in a world that can seem heartless and cold are the most moving tropes that I have experienced throughout this whole experiment. And this particular group of ragtag misfits, compiled of society’s castoffs, is profound in their devotion to the idea of their family.

During the non-Yule Tide part of the year, I find Rent’s politics incredibly frustrating even as I find the songs obscenely catchy. But during Christmas time, I think that tenants SHOULD be allowed to stay in their apartments rent-free and with ample provisions in terms of electricity. There’s a very traditional sense of “goodwill towards men” that Rent embodies, despite its seemingly fringe setting, that fits in perfectly with the pantheon of It’s a Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street. If Angel, dressed up as lady stripper Santa, singing a song about murdering a dog and giving money to people, isn’t the Christmas-iest thing you see this year, then I don’t know how to talk to you.

Rent tells the story of 7 friends in late 1980s New York, ravaged by AIDS, poverty and drug abuse. Along the way, it touches on love, friendship and loss. The movie adaptation is occasionally given to histrionics, and it definitely loses a lot of the original play's kinetic energy, but that cast and the emotions remain strong (although this movie is the one that made me hate Idina Menzel for about two years). And belief in the idea of love as transcending the seasons that a life goes through, while cliché, is particularly moving when accompanied by so many varied depictions of what love means.

Random Observations: 
• Doing a 99% Watch on a film that's whole premise is about a group of un and under-employed young kids unable to pay their rent and being pushed out of their homes by an uncaring real estate magnet is a little absurd; but suffice it to say that from the opening number of “Rent” and the immediate appearance of Taye Diggs saying “get your ass off the Range Rover,” to the huge protest about homeless rights, this movie is more socialist than the Muppets.

• My mom’s summary of Rent: “Christmas Eves are the bookends, held together by heroin and Aids… Merry Christmas.”

• The movie’s take on love: you can find it if you’re gay (Angel and Tom), if you’re a lesbian (Maureen and Joanne), if you have AIDS (Roger and Mimi), but not if you're a heterosexual white dude with no discernable medical history.

• Why do musical characters all think that Santa Fe is the promise land?

24 Days of Christmas – "I’m Dreaming Of A" Edition

Aside from listening to the Bing Crosby tune “White Christmas,” I really knew nothing about the 1954 classic film by the same name. For example, I didn’t know it was a musical, didn’t know it starred Bing Crosby, had no idea it took place in a snow-less Vermont, and didn’t know it was in goofy Technicolor. I also didn’t know how adorable it was or how manically entertaining.

The plot follows Wallace (Crosby) and Harris (Danny Kaye), a two man musical super act that starts when Harris saves Wallace during World War II. Harris is just enjoying the spoils of being a superstar, but Wallace’s bachelor-derived seriousness gets in his way, so Harris concocts plans to try and get Wallace hitched. When two sisters, Betty (Rosemary Clooney) and Judy, trick them into seeing their show, Harris sees the solution to his problem in the person of Betty. Through a series of hijinks, Harris maneuvers himself and Wallace onto a train bound for Vermont with Judy and Betty. Judy and Betty head to the Inn where they are meant to perform, but Vermont is oddly snowless and the Inn is deserted. Just as they’re ready to leave, Harris and Wallace run into General Waverly, the owner of the Inn and their personal hero. When they find out the Inn is close to bankruptcy, they decide to perform a huge show there to try and raise its profile. As they get ready for the show, they flirt with the sisters, hatch plans to rejuvenate the General’s moral, and generally enjoy a pre-60s bromance of the greatest variety. But after a misunderstanding, Betty becomes convinced that Harris and Wallace are just using the General for publicity and, rightfully, chews Wallace out. Meanwhile, Judy and Harris decide to fake an engagement. Pissed off, Betty takes off for New York, and Wallace has to go to beg her to come back, while simultaneously trying to convince everyone they knew to come to Vermont and save the General’s inn and pride.

Rosemary Clooney, with her broad shoulders and deep, soulful voice, is fantastic. She’s fiery and a subtle sort of sheltered awkward. And Bing Crosby, despite his painfully painted-in blue eyes, is suitably charismatic as Wallace. But I gotta say, I fell in love with Danny Kaye’s goofy Harris, who is probably the world’s most incompetent wingman, and who struts around with the manic energy of Cosmo Kramer and the ginger effervescence of a Weasley sibling.

As for the plot, it’s the kind of semi-screwball romance that the 40s and 50s excelled at. The dance numbers are more impressive than the singing (and a lot of the ballads are a little too long and serious for me), and despite the title, the movie is surprisingly light on Christmas. But damned if it’s not a beautiful moment when the General walks into a crowded ballroom on Christmas Eve to find it filled with all the men who are grateful to him for their lives. The final dance numbers, during the General tribute show, from “I Wish I Was Back in the Army” (my personal favorite) to the opulent version of “White Christmas” are what really make the movie (or, as my Dad put it, “the made whole movie just so they could sing this song.”) And the film smartly contrasts the beginning melancholy version with the ending joyful one to bring a sense of closure and, well, Christmasy cheer.

In all, White Christmas was exactly the sort of surface-ly cheerful good time that it’s candy-colored, overly sincere box suggests. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Random Observations:
 • 99% Watch: Small Business Owner (and honored war veteran) General Waverly struggles to keep his business afloat in a tough post-War economy

• “What would be a novelty here in Vermont?” “Maybe we can dig up a Democrat?” 50s politics were funny

• Less funny? The extended number about the joys of minstrel shows (at least they weren’t in black face)

• Vera-Ellen, who plays sister Judy, is too skinny to watch, even by today’s standards

• Fun side note: Danny Kaye is Jewish.

• According to this movie, men want to be in the army because they don’t have to think about their clothes and they get free food, women want to be able to pick out men based on age, weight and size. Actually, I wanted to make a feminist complaint, but that sounds about right.

24 Days of Christmas – Nazi Referencing Edition

Now that’s more like it.

From the first frames of Santa Claus Is Coming to Town (fake newsreel footage of kids trying to get ready for the arrival of Santa Claus), I was sold. It’s filled with lush claymation landscapes, witty songs, a surprisingly complicated original plot, and themes that range from trying to be the best you can be to the power of being kind to people around you (no matter how weird, mean, or cruel they mean seem, or how comically weird their name may seem). It is also an enormous Nazi analogy, mixed with a Robin Hood story, but more on that later.

Santa Claus is Coming To Town is probably the least well known of the classics by Arthur Rankin and Jules Bass (who also did Rudolph and Frosty). But here are the bare bone facts: Fred Astaire sings, dances and narrates the piece as a postman who knows everything about Santa. Mickey Rooney voices Santa. The movie features a character named Burgermeister Meister Burger who lives in Summertown. Basically, it wants to tell the story of Kris Kringle’s transformation into the one and only Santa Claus. Santa arrives at Burgermeister Meister Burger's as an orphaned baby, but he’s sent away. Then, a crazy wind pulls him towards the lair of the Winter Warlock (who is 17 kinds of evil), so the animals save him and bring him to the Kringles (specifically, Dingle Kringle, which is the greatest name I’ve ever heard, until you hear his brothers’ names). The five brothers bring him to the Elf queen, who lets him live with them (and names him Kris).

The elves can’t get their awesome toys to the little boys and girls because of the awful mountain, but Kris promises to do just that when he grows up. So grown up Kris (who’s a ginger, natch) tries to walk to the other side of the mountain to deliver toys and on the way encounters a penguin, thus confirming that penguins are indeed the Christmas bird. Kris and the penguin (Topper) arrive in Summertown, but Burgermeister Meister Burger has outlawed toys (in an Alan Menken-esque musical monologue). But Kris comes in, all red-trimmed and exuberant, and gives toys to all the girls and boys if only they’d stop pouting. But when Burgermeister Meister Burger is ready to put the kibosh in the whole communist love-in, Kris and Topper have to take off, and Kris suddenly turns out to have all the nonconformist agility of Aladdin and ends up right in the grasp of the Winter Warlock. But Kris’s kindness, and desire to give the Winter Warlock a toy, causes Winter’s heart to melt. Winter helps Kris start making a list (to check twice) of all the children to help him deliver illicit presents.

Burgermeister Meister Burger is, understandably, unhappy and he and Kris start a nice little covert war that actually kind of reminded me of communications in the Warsaw ghetto. Actually, the whole series of scenes of herr Bergermeister with his German accent tearing apart people’s homes to try and find the illegal toys puts Santa in the odd position of playing the role of the Jews in this World War II homage. Or maybe he’s more of a toy-ferrying Harriet Tubman. Either way, he is captured by Herr Bergermeister, who lights their toys on fire and HOLY CRAP this is a Nazi analogy, I’m not just being overly flippant. This is totally intentional.

Anyway, Kris’s lady love (distressed about Kris’ arrest) starts singing an acid-trip-styled ballad about being changed by Kris and fascism (or something), which also causes her hairstyle to change from uptight bun to flowy hippie locks. At this point, it is abundantly obvious that this movie wants more than just to tell the story of Santa. It’s actually providing trenchant political analysis about greed and fascism being overcome by kindness and generosity. Also that hippies have better hair.

Badass Jessica then frees Kris and his friends using magic reindeer. Kris grows out his beard (like a dirty hippy) to hide from Burgermeister Meister Burger, and then changes his name to Santa Claus, before marrying Jessica “in front of the lord.” The Winter Warlock (who has been losing his magic throughout the movie) summons up one last ounce of magic and lights the first Christmas tree. The movie ends with the beginning of the tradition of exchanging presents with the people you love on Christmas. A now-married Santa Claus takes on the task of giving out secret presents every year to the boys and girls. Thus Santa is recast from lovable philanthropist into the role of exiled revolutionary building his own castle outside of the society that banished him.

After the Burgermeisters fall from power, cool guys in jeans come and throw out their paintings and Santa is revered as the nice guy he truly is. But Santa gets old, and can no longer go out all the time delivering gifts, so he has to switch to just Christmas (because it is the holiest night of the year).

Even more than Rudolph, Santa Claus Is Coming To Town takes abundant advantage of the expanse of claymation. Every scene is full of countless awesome little details, and the characters are full of little visual quirks. And from the Nazi analogies, to the movie-ending monologue begging us to “learn Santa’s lesson” about peace on earth and goodwill towards man, no one can accuse this movie of being paint-by-numbers. It is the rare childhood classic that actually grows in estimation when watching it as an adult. 

Random Observations: 
• Does Kris Kringle look like the brothers in 7 Brides for 7 Brothers to anyone else? I half expected him to throw some ladies over his shoulder and bring them back as his bride.

• “Watch out for the doll. She’s a hardened criminal I hear.” This movie is freaking adorable.

 • “Why look here, changing from bad to good is as easy as taking your first step.” Who knew this movie was actually super helpful for New Year’s Resolutions as well as Christmas Cheer?

• Jessica kind of looks like Joan from Mad Men. Just sayin’.

 • 99% Watch: Besides Santa’s intense Socialist values, disregard for property laws, and distrust for authority (especially law enforcement), there’s actually less overt class warfare references here, just a general disdain for tyranny, except when it comes in the form of jolly men with beards.

• The point by point Santa explanations (“and that’s how he started going down chimneys”; “So that’s how he got the red suit!”) should be annoyingly on the nose, but they’re just so cute, I couldn’t get annoyed.

24 Days of Christmas – Frosty Reception Edition

The second of our classic animation trifecta is Frosty.

Shorter and less revolutionary than its reindeer brethren, Frosty looks less like Coraline and more like a classic Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon.

A bunch of kids get together after school on the day before Christmas to make a snowman. A magician’s magic (and very argumentative) hat falls on old Frosty’s head and he immediately comes to life. The kids and magician accept this remarkably quickly. Frosty is much more of a goofy children’s special, with very little to recommend itself outside of nostalgia and painfully catchy musical numbers.

With a dastardly, mustachioed magician, a wily bunny rabbit, and a precocious blond sidekick named Karen, dimwitted Frosty makes his way to North Pole salvation and encounters a series of trivial obstacles and adorable woodland creatures’ Christmas. Along the way, he seems to hit about 1,000 lame children’s movie clichés. Then Frosty melts, and the children cry, and the jazzy/bluesy theme comes on, and Santa has to console poor abandoned Karen. Here, the movie gets as close as it comes to metaphor, talking about how “Christmas snow” is always around us, even when it seems like Spring or Summer. 

Now, it may seem grumpy or un-Christmas-like to complain about a lack of substance in a half-hour animated special designed for children. But if I’ve learned anything throughout the other installments of this series, it’s that Christmas makes for particularly ripe creative ground, home for all sorts of stories about love and acceptance. So, as somewhat nauseous as it makes me to admit it, I’ll say it – Frosty kind of sucks. It’s not a particularly substantial story to begin with, but the animated special could be more fun to make up for its lack of real stuff. Instead, it feels surprisingly paint by numbers.

Random Observations: 
• I love that the movie felt the need to make clear to children that it is only okay to steal a hat from a mean old magician man (even if you are an adorable bunny rabbit)

• “Those silly snowmen, once they come to life, they don’t know nothin’.”

• 99% Watch: The children and Frosty’s lack of money keeps them from getting him to the North Pole, but some clever Robin Hood’ing by Frosty (jumping a refrigerator car on a train, naturally) gets him there anyway.

• Maybe Karen is so cold because she’s not wearing pants.

Unexpected Golden Globe Nominees

It really is a shame that The Golden Globes, one of the only major award shows that makes a point of acknowledging comedies and musicals, often does such a bad job of it. Academy pretension will most likely keep talented comedy actors like Emma Stone out of the Oscar race, so The Globes is where they are allowed to shine. But the accomplishments of such oft-overlooked achievers are degraded when voters lump them in with less deserving but bigger-name stars just to fill up the categories. E online (among others) has been swiping freely at 2 contenders in particular: The Tourist and Burlesque. One is an over-the-top, nominated-in-the-wrong-category badly executed snooze fest that clearly was nominated to get the star count up. The other isn't actually all that bad.


THE TOURIST

Oh the Mediocrity!

Golden Globe nominee Angelina Jolie walks around a lot. And pouts, she's good with the pouting. Golden Globe nominee Johnny Depp wanders aimlessly, mutters the occasional fun quip then reveals an unenlightened twist.

The setting's nice, the costumes are pretty and I like Paul Bettany (mostly out of residual love from A Beautiful Mind and A Knight's Tale), but that's it. The 2 superstars at the centre of the movie are just that, superstars, not actors. Which is particularly sad because both (especially Johnny) are quite capable of acting circles around so many others. Their complete lack of chemistry is almost alarming and to say the writing was pedantic is the biggest understatement since calling the horrifyingly obvious twist ending merely "unenlightened".

The Tourist is a big-budget, big-stars waste of time. It also in no way qualifies as either a musical or a comedy and yet somehow was nominated as one. But hey, it'll put some more famous faces on the red carpet.

BURLESQUE

The seemingly showy musical, on the other hand, lacks the self-important grandiosity of The Tourist. For all its sequins and glitter, Burlesque possesses an almost self-deprecating simplicity and is no worse off for it.

Unlike last year's glitzy musical Nine, Burlesque sports a cast of oft-mocked, remarkably talented folks instead of Oscar winners and their pal autotune. Perfectly cast, Cher's identity as a somewhat has-been but still utterly fabulous icon lends a brilliant melancholy to her character, a trod-upon diva too tough to acknowledge defeat and too passionate to back down. Her musical number "You Haven't Seen the Last of Me" is an aching anthem of "this is Cher's world, you're just watching it" diva-ness. And speaking of divas, there has never been, nor will there ever be anyone quite like Christina. Other than the aforementioned ballad, the film's songs are generally uninspired, but in the hands of the definitive beltress, they shake the floorboards. The pint-sized fireball raises the standard ingenue-with-a-dream character to new heights, not with outstanding acting, but by giving her the voice that makes her deserving of that dream.

The writing is pretty rocky, but the film is well-paced and the audience too entertained to care. The romance storyline is well-developed, aided in no small part by the crazy chemistry between Christina and Cam Gigandet (who somehow manages to come off as trustworthy despite his perfect abs and guy-liner). Stanley Tucci also adds some cred to the film with his wonderful role as Cher's best friend (but I've never not loved Tucci, including that time last year when he played a serial killer).

But it's the idea that this cast needs extra cred that I think is a problem. True, Christina is not an actress, but the role really requires a singer, and no one's better than her. Cher, however many years ago it may have been, is an Oscar-winning actress. Alan Cumming and Peter Gallagher are respected Broadway performers. Julianne Hough and Chelsea Traille are some of the brightest dancing talents in North America (and Hough's presence lends a fun irony to a tongue-in-cheek Dancing with the Stars joke). Gigandet is just plain good in the role, who cares if he was once on The OC or had a part in Twilight. The rest of the excellent cast is filled out by actors whose biggest crime is that they work predominantly in TV: the always-great Eric Dane from Grey's Anatomy, Kristen Bell (one of television's great heroines as Veronica Mars, whose been slumming it in her last few films), the charming Glee star Dianna Agron, even the lesser-known David Walton (100 Questions) makes his mark on the film. The cast of Burlesque truly is excellent, they're just not "movie stars".

Don't get me wrong, I don't think Burlesque is the greatest film of the year, I don't even think it's close. But it is underrated. It's not even close to bad. It's entertaining, decently executed and shows off some really talented people. It's a solid movie musical and deserves not to be laughed at for being nominated as such. It's at least better than Mamma Mia!, but that had bigger stars- I'm just saying.

Tangled Up

Posted by Rachael

I have a confession to make. Despite years of soccer-playing, action-figure-collecting, comic-book-reading, action-movie-loving tomboy-ery, I've always, truly, wanted to be a Disney princess. But I didn't want to be just any princess: I wanted to be Belle, the confident heroine who ultimately saves herself and her love with her brains and good heart.

This is hardly a unique statement. Generations upon generations of girls the world over have day dreamed about being a disney princess. But it's the neccessary context around which to understand my reaction to Disney's Tangled.

The newest Disney film follows Rapunzel (Mandy Moore) and Flynn (Zachary Levi) as they evade a wicked wit, uh Old Lady, chase their dreams, banter, interact with adorable anthropomorphized animals, and, inevitably, fall in love. It was cliched before Enchanted came out and set it in the real world, but it definitely feels worn in this hour of post-modern Shrek-ery and Pixar films.

But god damn. That so doesn't matter. The beauty of a true Disney film is not in the shocks of the plot (although Tangled is an excellently constructed story), but in the magic that floats off the screen. The animation is top-notch, the voice work across the board excellent, and the songs (as drafted by Disney vet Alan Menken) are fantastic.

top of that, Rapunzel is a heroine for the ages. The movie feels at once classic (there's no meta-winks at the camera, no irony to be found here) and modern (yet the film doesn't feel the need to relegate Rapunzel to a pre-Mulan damsel in distress mode). As voiced by Moore, she's spunky, intelligent, innocent, engaging, and active, constantly working towards her own freedom and her own happy ending. If the feminist in me has always had a sort of love-hate relationship with the princess side of me, both sides happily coexisted while I was in that theater.

A lot of reviews I've read feel the need to explain now what Tangled isn't (oscar-worthy, a Pixar film, going to cure cancer), as if the reviewer feels a little ashamed of how much they fell in love while in that movie theater. But screw it. If my life was the Disney movie I wish it was, then walking out of that theater I was in full blown ballad-mode, and not the beginning, heart-felt longing ballad, but the near end of movie I'm so happy my head could burst ballad. And if that's all a movie has to give me, I feel no need to appologize for my adoration of it.

Disney recently announced that Tangled is the last of their princess movies, and seeing the film made me realize what a shame that truly is. It isn't just the songs or the pretty dresses or the cute animals; it's the princesses themselves who, when done right, are much better than just future dolls, they're the fully-realized version of who we wish we were. and as long as the princesses are as fantastic and interesting as Rapunzel, that's a good thing.